Project Wishes

     A few years ago, I came up with an idea to do something special at my school. I was teaching second grade at a school in Riverside, California and we were noted for being a large elementary school (1,100 students) but low income levels and low test scores. At the time, “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” and “Three Wishes” were television programs that were popular. After watching these shows, my idea was to somehow grant wishes to as many students and staff members as possible. The challenge was…well, everything! No one had done anything like this before and there was no money for a project like this either.

     My first step was to talk to my principal. She in essence was the main stakeholder that I needed full support and approval from. I put together an audio “commercial” that introduced the program with music, sound effects and a voice over. I also created “Wish Papers” that the students and staff could write down their wishes. Then I met with my principal, described the project, showed her the “wish” papers and played the commercial. She immediately had buy in and was ready to support and approve the project.
     The next step was to inform and invite the school staff to be part of this project. The principal and I presented the idea at a staff meeting and it was not well received. Many had questions and concerns, but mostly doubts. They thought the project would fail and very few were willing to help us carry out this project, but they all agreed to pass out the wish papers to their students. They were to give the students the wish paper and tell them to write down anything they wished for and not to limit their wishes.

     The students and staff wrote down their wishes and I collected them all in these pre-made envelopes that I put together for each class. Once I collected the envelopes, I went through and read all the wishes. The wishes ranged from simple items such as a toothbrush to the extremes such as a new roof or new car as well as requests for new siblings and even a husband for a mom!
     Since there was no budget for this project I decided to start the wish granting with my own money. I purchased some of the easier requests and started granting them. Slowly word was getting out and more wishes started to get granted. Then our principal talked to a local newspaper reporter and she came and did a story on us. From the moment the story hit the paper the school was inundated with calls and visits from people all over the city. In the end, we granted around 400 actual wishes, were given over $2,000 in cash and were able to give every student some kind of gift. There are so many amazing stories that happened during that school year and how individuals, offices and even another school participated in this project.
     In retrospect, there were parts to this project that were successful and parts that could have been improved. In essence, I was the Program Manager and my principal was the client and key stakeholder. Identifying her as the key supporter and stakeholder was important to this project. My first meeting with her we actually created an “oral” Statement of Work. We discussed the “Purpose, Objectives, Constraints and Assumptions” (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008, p. 43) of the Statement of Work. We should have written it down and signed off on it to make it official, but this project was such uncharted territory and not expected to be so successful that we did not think to do that.
     As the PM, I did fulfill many of the responsibilities of that role. According to the video, “Project Kickoff” (Walden University, 2010), Dr. Stolovich listed nine PM responsibilities. As the PM, I did “Launch the project, managed all the pieces, identified and engaged the stakeholders, allocated the resources and closed out the project.” (2010) However, at one point and for a few months, our principal decided to take on the role as PM and I was unable to “manage the activities” or “plan and execute follow up support” (2010) for some of the wishes. In time, our principal gave back the PM responsibilities to me which is why I was able to close the project, but many of the smaller details and activities were overlooked and not handled properly. It was during this time that my principal even offended a local office group that was heavily supporting our project. If I was taking care of the PM duties at that time, this would have been avoided.
     According to the article, “The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects!” (Greer, 2010) it lists steps to managing a project. The first step, “Define the project concept, then get support and approval” (Greer, 2010) was accomplished. The second step, “Get your team together and start the project” (Greer, 2010) was also met, even though the “team” was really only principal and myself at first. This is where we should have improved the success of the project. We should have gotten more support from other staff members at the very start of the project. As the project gained momentum, the office staff and some of the teachers jumped in to help, but we should have gotten more involved at the beginning. The third step, “Figure out exactly what the finished work products will be” (Greer, 2010) could have been better. We really had no idea where this project would lead us or even if it would grant any wishes, so we did not plan out what we wanted the finished project to look like.
     In the end, hundreds of students were granted their wish, an elementary school was the center of incredible blessings, and the project was not only successful but took on a life of its own. Years later I still run into families and other staff members that remind me of how amazing that year turned out to be.

 References

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.
Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
“Project Kickoff” Walden University, 2010