Project Post-Mortem: The 20/20 of Hindsight

 

 What contributes to the success of a project? How can unexpected challenges be avoided in the management of future projects? The delivery of completed projects should come with a sense of pride and accomplishment. However, a retrospective examination of a project from beginning to end, or project post-mortem, helps with the level of project success (or failure) in meeting the client’s goals (McLaughlin, 2013).  This post narratively offers the results of a simplistic post-mortem reflection of a personal project management experience.

Several years ago, I lead the planning, development, and implementation of a statewide project designed to engage undergraduate students from across the state who had an interest in pursuing health-related careers. The project involved creating a college-skills type course that would demonstrate the application of academic success skills as lifelong learning skills within the health arena while also engaging students in a self-directed career exploration, academic development, and professional growth experience. As project manager and lead course designer, I assumed responsibility for the majority of tasks associated with the project. The tasks that were outlined in overseeing the development, design, and implementation of the project by:

• ·       collaborating with health professionals and health profession education faculty to determine the skills and knowledge that should be emphasized within the course content and brainstorm the strategies to use to promote learner engagement.
• ·       working with a team to research, write, and submit a grant to offset the costs associated with the project development and implementation.
• ·       establishing a timeline for the project design and implementation.
• ·       connecting with key personnel at the state technical system office to garner buy-in, gain understanding of how to launch a course statewide, attach transferable credit, and secure deployment support.
• ·       identifying and secure assistance with course design.
• ·       leading the course design process.
• ·       establishing guidelines and processes for contractual agreements, disbursements, etc.
• ·       establishing processes for identifying technical college partners.
• ·       collaborating with technical college partners to identify course facilitators.
• ·       collaborating with partner IT representatives and vendors to select, procure, and install videoconferencing hardware.
• ·       train course facilitators.
• ·       evaluate project processes and solution outcomes for quality improvement.

The grant proposal was accepted and approved by the funding agency with a 4-year cycle award. The approved grant proposal served as documentation that defined and supported the processes anticipated for the success of the project (Indeed, n.d.). As the primary artifact, the document contained the research and frameworks that grounded the project structure, scopes, goals, and objectives and identified needs of the stakeholders to be addressed. Also included were the project timelines, budget, benchmarks for evaluation, and deliverables, strategies for deployment, communication. Subsequent artifacts included the course curriculum as both printed facilitator guides and SCORM files for LMS publication. Other artifacts included the development and signing of contracts between the colleges accepted as project partners and my agency that outlined points of contact, requirements, assignment of tasks and responsibilities, timelines, benchmarks, budgets and budget disbursement schedule, procurement guidelines, and processes for reporting and evaluation. The key personnel agreed on the scope of the project and that adequate time, resources, and expertise were allotted to support the delivery of a quality solution (Walden University, LLC (Executive Producer), n.d.a)

Facilitator training was delivered as a two day, in-person workshop. The objectives of building instructional capacity, faculty development, and an environment of collaboration were achieved. Facilitators were engaged by responding to requests to share opinions, experiential knowledge, and instructional strategies for increased impact, efficacy, and validity (Stolovich & Keeps, 2020; Jenke, 2012). Collaborative relationships were formed and sustained beyond the life of the project. Course evaluations were conducted with each lesson allowing for learner responses, assessments, and facilitator feedback to guide immediate revisions. Course facilitators were convened virtually twice per semester to review and discuss lesson modifications. Facilitator debriefings were held at the end of each academic year to celebrate wins, discuss challenges, share insights, brainstorm ideas for improvements, and further cultivate faculty development and collaborative relationships. This was a major success that contributes to the reduction of siloed delivery of learning that persists within the state.

Despite the successes of the project, it fell short of meeting all of the established benchmarks. While it was attempted to engage key personnel for inclusive consideration in the project assessment, development, and proposal composition (Walden University, LLC (Executive Producer), n.d.a), the project did not garner the level of interest from the technical colleges. There was a failed assumption that the state technical system office would take the lead and have adequate influence in the promotion of the project and the ability to encourage the application of colleges   for consideration to participate as project partners, a considerable amount of time was required to connect with key personnel within the colleges to recruit participants. Hours of telephone, videoconferencing, and in-person campus visits resulted in the recruitment of colleges to fill four of the five slots allotted for partners to adopt and deploy the course. Although this may not be considered an additional task beyond the scope of the project, a sense of “scope creep” occurred because tasks of the PM had to be reprioritized (Walden University, LLC (Executive Producer), n.d.b). Because funds were not being dispersed between the state technical system office and my agency, a formal agreement that outlined tasks, responsibilities and expectations was not established. The development a signatured contract as an artifact of the project to signify an agreeance of roles and responsibilities may have helped to mitigate the risk of the failure occurring. There were several partners “non-financial” project partners. Including written agreements with these partners to ensure that all parties are informed and aware of expectations as project artifacts should be considered an essential aspect of all projects.

Prioritizing tasks appropriately and staying focused on the completion of necessary tasks for the achievement of results is a major responsibility of project managers (Walden University, LLC (Executive Producer), n.d.b). I invite you to respond by commenting with examples and/or suggestions for conducting a project post-mortem. I look forward to reading your comments and growing from your feedback.

References

Indeed. (n.d.). 10 project artifact types and when to implement them (plus FAQs). Indeed Career Guide. Retrieved July 13, 2022, from https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/project-artifacts-types#:~:text=A%20project%20artifact%20is%20the,specific%20deliverables%2C%20objectives%20and%20templates.

Jaenke, R. (2012). Just ask them: Increasing learner engagement. T & D., 66(7)., 30-31.

McLaughlin, E. (2013, October 18). What is project post-mortem? - definition from whatis.com. SearchCIO. Retrieved July 14, 2022, from https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/project-post-mortem.

Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.a). Practitioner voices: Barriers to project success [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu.

Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (n.d.b). Project management concerns: ‘Scope                           creep’ [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu.

Stolovich, H. & Keeps, E. J. (2020). Telling ain't training: Updated, expanded, and                                              enhanced (2^nd ed.). American Society for Training and Development.