Crash course!
This week I shall share a day by day account of how a core course becomes a crash course.
This morning, we started Term 2 with the core course of Project Management Introduction (PMI). The course revolves around working on a project involving the building of a warehouse. Between now and Thursday, we will be working on this course and will finally have a simulation exercise wherein we shall have to compete with the other 20 teams on course.
Oh, by the way, the “we” here is my new family. As an annual feature, each team and stream of Term 1 is reshuffled and new teams made. This enables one to experience a new environment and a new set of people. So my new Learning team and family have - Becky Drinkwater (Britain), Christian Ward (New Zealand), Olivier Alvarez (France), Chris Wyper (Scotland), Dennis Tsang (Hong Kong) and myself. Our team is an exact replica of the MBA batch with an average age of 31 and average work experience of 8 years. As part of the school’s plan, we get to know each other while at work on the PMI project and are not given time to think of settling in first. In real life also, one doesn’t get time to first settle in – one is required to hit the ground running and get to know his peers while running.
There was excitement in the air as the school reopened today after a good Christmas vacation. While I was on campus throughout, many of my colleagues had been travelling across continents. Their excited voices had much to share. And almost every one was happy to be back to school, enthusiastic about having regained their strength to take a dig at Term 2.
The day started with John Algar sharing the basic concepts of Project Management. And like any other astounding faculty of Cranfield, John made PMI such a simple sounding subject. His ability and skill to relate theory with practice and real life “personal” examples of live projects made the subject seem more interesting to even those who (wrongly) considered PMI as “dry”.
We got frequent breaks during the day long session, wherein we had to go back to our syndicate areas and discuss out our views / ideas on the brief. Our warehouse project has just a dozen activities, but in just a small exercise such as this, the learning is immense. I thought I had never been in Project Management but I was wrong. My last assignment as regional head of finance & commercial operations in India had involved setting up of franchisee owned retail operations and in a period stretching over four years, I had been involved in construction and setting up many warehouses. As I sat there in the lecture theatre, I was realizing that you don’t need highly sophisticated tools like MS Project, etc. to become a Project Manager. My team isn’t using one. Instead, what we are using is logic and a whole lot of planning. We have also decided that each of us will take up assignments that are not our respective functional expertise. We want to develop our multi functional skills and hence I volunteered not to pick up finance portfolio for the project. So while Olivier and Dennis will manage the entire financials of payables, receivables, banking and funding, I together with Chris and Christian will manage the procurement, labour and site work. Becky has been appointed as our Project Manager.
The lessons I learnt today were an amalgam of small pearls of wisdom that may seem miniscule but make a big difference to the success or failure for a project. I am sure this term will be more exciting, more fun and more demanding than the previous one. And I am also sure that the next three days will be very demanding and full of learning for me and others as well.
This morning, we started Term 2 with the core course of Project Management Introduction (PMI). The course revolves around working on a project involving the building of a warehouse. Between now and Thursday, we will be working on this course and will finally have a simulation exercise wherein we shall have to compete with the other 20 teams on course.
Oh, by the way, the “we” here is my new family. As an annual feature, each team and stream of Term 1 is reshuffled and new teams made. This enables one to experience a new environment and a new set of people. So my new Learning team and family have - Becky Drinkwater (Britain), Christian Ward (New Zealand), Olivier Alvarez (France), Chris Wyper (Scotland), Dennis Tsang (Hong Kong) and myself. Our team is an exact replica of the MBA batch with an average age of 31 and average work experience of 8 years. As part of the school’s plan, we get to know each other while at work on the PMI project and are not given time to think of settling in first. In real life also, one doesn’t get time to first settle in – one is required to hit the ground running and get to know his peers while running.
There was excitement in the air as the school reopened today after a good Christmas vacation. While I was on campus throughout, many of my colleagues had been travelling across continents. Their excited voices had much to share. And almost every one was happy to be back to school, enthusiastic about having regained their strength to take a dig at Term 2.
The day started with John Algar sharing the basic concepts of Project Management. And like any other astounding faculty of Cranfield, John made PMI such a simple sounding subject. His ability and skill to relate theory with practice and real life “personal” examples of live projects made the subject seem more interesting to even those who (wrongly) considered PMI as “dry”.
We got frequent breaks during the day long session, wherein we had to go back to our syndicate areas and discuss out our views / ideas on the brief. Our warehouse project has just a dozen activities, but in just a small exercise such as this, the learning is immense. I thought I had never been in Project Management but I was wrong. My last assignment as regional head of finance & commercial operations in India had involved setting up of franchisee owned retail operations and in a period stretching over four years, I had been involved in construction and setting up many warehouses. As I sat there in the lecture theatre, I was realizing that you don’t need highly sophisticated tools like MS Project, etc. to become a Project Manager. My team isn’t using one. Instead, what we are using is logic and a whole lot of planning. We have also decided that each of us will take up assignments that are not our respective functional expertise. We want to develop our multi functional skills and hence I volunteered not to pick up finance portfolio for the project. So while Olivier and Dennis will manage the entire financials of payables, receivables, banking and funding, I together with Chris and Christian will manage the procurement, labour and site work. Becky has been appointed as our Project Manager.
The lessons I learnt today were an amalgam of small pearls of wisdom that may seem miniscule but make a big difference to the success or failure for a project. I am sure this term will be more exciting, more fun and more demanding than the previous one. And I am also sure that the next three days will be very demanding and full of learning for me and others as well.
posted by Sandeep Gupta at
8:15 pm
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