Favorite Past Time and Favorite Band!

This past week I was invited to go see my favorite band U2!! My good friend Mike called me on Friday, bought tickets on Saturday and off we went to the see the best band in the world! When we got there, we walked to our seats and they were literally in the highest section in the LAST row! My friend could not handle the altitude, so we went to exchange our seats. We were able to meet with the Ticketmaster representatives and they gave us seats on the floor level and only a few rows up from the floor! And it was for no additional charge! On top of that... I literally sat next to music producer Quincy Jones!!!

Then after he was seated, Marg Helgenberger, of CSI fame sat in the row in front of Quincy! We had a great time!

Dean

Scope Creep: Shoes For Kids

A few years ago, right after my school had finished the “Wishes” program (See Project Wishes post – May 12) another teacher had an idea. Her husband was in Afghanistan in the Army and reported back to his wife how most the kids there had no shoes and the terrain was awful to walk in without shoes. They decided to have a shoe drive at our school. It was her project but she enlisted my help since I had some experience with the other project.


The plan was for her to be in charge of the project but I would assist in any way she needed. I put a recording together to be played over the intercom system at the school and we even went to the principal together to submit the project. It was my understanding that my role was to be limited, but as the project progressed, so did my role. Scope creep entered by adding more of my time and resources to the project. Nothing was ever written down, but in some ways, it should have been. This is a typical way for scope creep to enter because a PM, “in an attempt to avoid bureaucracy, adopts an informal process of handling requests for change.” (Potny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008, p. 346) Not only did the project require more of my time, but my classroom became a holding room for half the shoes that were collected. Students and teachers were coming to me asking for information on the project and were bringing me the shoes during class time. This was scope creep on two levels, the project and my actual teaching job.

Looking back, if I was the PM I would have done a few things differently. First, I would have enlisted more help from the staff. Second, I would have written out a plan that included a time frame of how long the shoe program would last, a list of team members and their roles and a set schedule of when the shoes could be collected and a place to store them. Third, we should have worked harder at getting more student, parent and community involvement. Fourth, when scope creeps entered, as Dr. Stolovich stated in the video, “Project Management Concerns: ‘Scope Creep,’” (Walden University, 2010) “let them know the idea is valuable, but not able to do it right now.” That would have helped alleviate some of extra time and resources required as the project progressed. Since this was not a large project it did not require a large amount of planning, but we could have done it a little better.

In the end, we collected over 300 pairs of shoes and sent them to Afghanistan. The kids were so happy and everyone involved felt good about this project. We put together a video and here is the link!


Shoes For Kids - http://youtu.be/U_ZzbyJbHwM


References

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.

Video Program: “Project Management Concerns: ‘Scope Creep’” Walden University, 2010