The project that I was involved in was creating a curriculum
map for the coming year that showed an overview of the topics that the 2nd
grade teachers would cover in an academic year.
This map had to be correlated to state standards, and to the various
curriculums that we were implementing. In total, this ended up being a 60 page
document that contained a lot of information. The project was successful because we had
highly qualified subject matter experts on our team who were able to model what
the curriculum mapping process looked like. We had a great frame of reference
for our starting point.
The
project could have been more successful, if every team member was held
accountable to completing portions of the curriculum map, and if each
individual performed to the same work standards. This is where a work breakdown
structure or a work-order agreement would have helped everyone understand their
role on the team. I also believe that a linear responsibility chart would have
allowed each team member to see how they fit into the big picture, (Portny,
2008). Individuals on the team were not sold on the importance of a curriculum
map, so of course they did not give as much effort as expected on the project.
Something
that would have motivated the supporters to complete their tasks could have
been a small stipend that would be given as a reward for fulfilling the
work-order agreement. The importance of
choosing strong candidates to fill project positions was also reiterated
throughout this project. As mentioned by Portny (2008), candidates should have
been chosen after speaking with human resources. In the case of the curriculum
mapping project, each teacher was required to participate in the project, and
so there was very little buy-in.
Lastly,
the amount of time given to the teachers to finalize their curriculum maps was
only two weeks. This greatly affected the quality of the curriculum maps, and the
time frame should have been expanded. A
post-mortem meeting was not held after the completion of this project.
Resources
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.
You mentioned a very interesting concept of offering an incentive or a stipend to project participants. I thought, initially, that just the notion of this was brilliant and a great way to protect the quality of the project end result. Then, I started to think more about this idea and tried to imagine how this could be executed successfully. You couldn’t offer the stipend to anyone that wanted to participate because then you would not have control over quality input. As you mentioned, you would have to strategically select strong candidates and offer the stipend to them directly. Even then, the candidates still would need to have some measure of personal gain within the project to truly stay invested. For example, let’s say the curriculum mapping focus was narrowed to include only science and math curriculums. Even if you appointed your most respected English teacher for this project, and offered him\her a stipend, they may still not feel invested because the project has no direct gain for them and their department. Still, if executed and planned for correctly, using a stipend or some other incentive could make a project manager’s life a little easier.
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