Jun 09 2006
“We never miss a deadline…”
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Spent two hours this past Tuesday listening to various student presentations in my Project Management class final.
A couple of highlights:
- Our group went first (random draw). I started us off with a 30-second intro retelling the advice of a friend: “Good judgement comes from experience… And experience comes from bad judgement.” Delivered properly, it normally draws a laugh, but all the other students were too nervous about their own upcoming presentation to laugh. So I simply continued on by explaining that when I’d first heard that, my immediate thought was: “Man, now I just have to go and make as many bad judgements as quickly as possible so that I can make good judgements.” However, after some continued thought, I realized that we can vicariously learn from other’s bad examples–the sobering corrolary is that they can learn just as easily from our poor decisions.
- A lot of Powerpoint clutter… too many nervous students just transcribed their words into bullet points and then wondered why everyone was so busy reading instead of listening.
- My group’s presentation went very smoothly–we initially started by spending an hour in front of a whiteboard outlining… everything went so much smoother because of that up-front planning time.
- A continual emphasis on the lack of project post-mortem policies. Aside from having a handy binder to help transform that client into a salesman, not making time to reflect on lessons learned means you’ll miss much of the potential to add to your experience…
- Mosaic company really caught my attention. Despite my inability to find their website, they are supposedly a little gem of a company started about ten years ago which now employs up to thirty-five people. They’ve never missed a deadline in their entire corporate history. Major accomplishment. Major selling point.
- Got me thinking about the importance of timeliness. People don’t care as much if you don’t do something, but if you do decide to try, they care if you’re late. Something I need to think about more as I sometimes commit to too many things and can’t get them all done in the required time frame.
Overall, well worth the two hours. The teacher, Dr. Peter Haug, is very, very good.
Much thanks to Robbie Harding from Parity Corporation for taking time to talk with us. Attached is our group paper that we wrote.
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