PMI.....continued
I continue with the experience in PMI simulation from yesterday.
Coming back to your own team could be equally disorientating..... especially when you realize that much water has flown and there were some "outsiders" who had come to your project. I am afraid it is not a good feeling, but life is not kind either. And I guess this was a subtle message or learning that the professors wanted us to experience. Simple statement of such facts wouldn't have impacted us as much as experiencing it. And they had hit the nail on the head.
After some anxious moments of recouping, Becky and I got updated of what all had happened in our absence. They had received news from the client on change of scope. An activity had been added midway during execution and it fell on the critical path. So work could now proceed only after taking up this new task immediately. The client did offer a decent price for this task, though. But it meant increase in our execution time and we had no choice.
Soon enough, we erred again on crane allocation. There was no scope to recover from this slippage and we knew our performance would not be upto the mark. A look of disappointment was all over us ...but we had no one to blame. One may say, these were just slip-up’s. But when you evaluate the impact of such small slip up’s and realise that you may have lost over £50k of profits, it doesn’t remain small. Somewhere along the next rounds of decision making, I felt our enthusiasm sliding down. But despite the disappointment vivid on faces, we kept on persevering to ensure that no further errors happen.
The writing was on the wall, though. It set me thinking – how easy it is to just brush our errors away, thinking it to be just a simulation exercise. Would I have reacted in the same way if it was real life situation? I knew I wouldn’t and I was wondering what the project manager would go through. After all, in real life the buck stops at him / her. I was wondering how Becky would be feeling, what emotions she would be going through – but she did a great job of keeping her disappointment within and continued to lead the project, pepping us up.
While we finished our project over the next few decision rounds, we kept hearing sounds of cheers and claps from some other syndicate around. Some teams had already completed their warehouses and had found out their profit figures too. Some teams had made over £100k. A few others had goofed up too, like us, but differently.
The evening saw the batch get together in the lecture theatre for a briefing from the professors. They shared their perspective of the simulation and had some insightful views to offer. All in all, the simulation was a great way to learn Project Management. While the simulation is over, the work does not end there. We are now required to write an individual report per the brief made available. It is a very tough assignment since there are quite a few do’s and don’t’s on the way the report is expected to be written by the faculty. It is more than just a report capturing the “what happened” and “how it happened” kinds. The report goes beyond that, expecting us to include recommendations to the management on what better can be done, and much more.
You bet, I have much to write in it. The problem will be the word limit just like we face in a WAC.
Coming back to your own team could be equally disorientating..... especially when you realize that much water has flown and there were some "outsiders" who had come to your project. I am afraid it is not a good feeling, but life is not kind either. And I guess this was a subtle message or learning that the professors wanted us to experience. Simple statement of such facts wouldn't have impacted us as much as experiencing it. And they had hit the nail on the head.
After some anxious moments of recouping, Becky and I got updated of what all had happened in our absence. They had received news from the client on change of scope. An activity had been added midway during execution and it fell on the critical path. So work could now proceed only after taking up this new task immediately. The client did offer a decent price for this task, though. But it meant increase in our execution time and we had no choice.
Soon enough, we erred again on crane allocation. There was no scope to recover from this slippage and we knew our performance would not be upto the mark. A look of disappointment was all over us ...but we had no one to blame. One may say, these were just slip-up’s. But when you evaluate the impact of such small slip up’s and realise that you may have lost over £50k of profits, it doesn’t remain small. Somewhere along the next rounds of decision making, I felt our enthusiasm sliding down. But despite the disappointment vivid on faces, we kept on persevering to ensure that no further errors happen.
The writing was on the wall, though. It set me thinking – how easy it is to just brush our errors away, thinking it to be just a simulation exercise. Would I have reacted in the same way if it was real life situation? I knew I wouldn’t and I was wondering what the project manager would go through. After all, in real life the buck stops at him / her. I was wondering how Becky would be feeling, what emotions she would be going through – but she did a great job of keeping her disappointment within and continued to lead the project, pepping us up.
While we finished our project over the next few decision rounds, we kept hearing sounds of cheers and claps from some other syndicate around. Some teams had already completed their warehouses and had found out their profit figures too. Some teams had made over £100k. A few others had goofed up too, like us, but differently.
The evening saw the batch get together in the lecture theatre for a briefing from the professors. They shared their perspective of the simulation and had some insightful views to offer. All in all, the simulation was a great way to learn Project Management. While the simulation is over, the work does not end there. We are now required to write an individual report per the brief made available. It is a very tough assignment since there are quite a few do’s and don’t’s on the way the report is expected to be written by the faculty. It is more than just a report capturing the “what happened” and “how it happened” kinds. The report goes beyond that, expecting us to include recommendations to the management on what better can be done, and much more.
You bet, I have much to write in it. The problem will be the word limit just like we face in a WAC.
posted by Sandeep Gupta at
8:19 pm
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