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Closeout

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In project management, the final phase of a project is called closure. It’s a bit like the old adage that a job is not over until the paperwork is done. The closure phase usually involves wrapping up loose ends, paying final invoices, and releasing resources to go onto other projects and priorities.

In my case, closure means a little more. As some of you may know, I’ll be leaving UTC at the end of July to move on. I’m excited for the challenge ahead as CIO at Lenoir-Rhyne, a small private university in North Carolina. But as a project manager and member of the UTC community, I will miss the camaraderie I’ve experienced with so many in the UTC family.

I would be derelict in my duties if I did not provide a few thank yous and recognitions as I close out my web projects tenure…

Thanks to George Heddleston for trusting me. Thank you for believing that it all can be done at the same time as everything else and for allowing me the breadth and depth to make it so. And thank you, too, for letting me nurture my inner blogger.

Thanks to Dennis Gendron for telling George, “I have someone who might be able to help with project management.”

Thanks to the web student workers: Josh, Christina, Allyson, Jamesen, Aaren, Kishan, Lauren, Lauren, Nicholas, and Luke. You are the best. What an education you have received and will continue to get as part of this team. It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure with stories and jokes to tell along the way.

Thanks to Gina Stafford and Stephen Rumbaugh for all the laughs, the shared interests, and for all you do to keep the UTC community informed, engaged, and de-treed. And to Sarah Joyner, may the Oxford comma live on in our hearts and minds. We simply could not have accomplished the website refresh or my weekly blog posts without you!

Thanks to the interactive map implementation team of Donny Behneman, Holley Beeland, Faith Garner, Eric Williams, David Siedel, Jason Lyon, Steve Rumbaugh, and Chris Gilligan. Of the dozens of projects I’ve managed over the years, this, without a doubt, tops the list. What an incredible gift we are delivering to the campus when the map goes live on Monday.

Finally, thanks to the web team of Chris Gilligan, Michael Flores, and Bernardo Martinez. Through website refresh and half a migration, you’ve made me laugh, cry, drink, and learn a whole new language that is web development. It has been a joy and privilege to work with you, hire some of you, and slave away beside you these last two years. I will miss GIF Fridays, food talks, and the dozens of simultaneous Teams conversations that fill our days.

I now pass the torch to Megan Shadrick. My hope is that you find the thrill of the chase exhilarating and are able to stand your ground against whatever might be thrown at you 😊. It’s worth every minute.

So, thanks for the memories my friends.

The Shortest Pencil Beats the Longest Memory

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My husband is a woodworker. He reads, plans, makes notes, makes more notes, draws pictures, creates mock-ups from cardboard, practices his ideas on leftovers, figures out the cost of materials, scouts various hardware stores, and eventually he starts the actual building of a project. I frequently tell him he has all the hallmarks of a great project manager, although his projects seldom complete on the schedule I provide!

So this weekend, in his new issue of Fine Homebuilding magazine, he points out an article on “Trading in your hammer for a clipboard.” My personal and professional life collided.

I don’t have a good analogy for the hammer, but I can say that many of those tasks listed above have happened in various forms to bring the Web Refresh project team to this point.

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Sprinting to Go Live

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The finish line has been set for months.

The crowd grows anxious as the race date nears.

The race organizers wait with anticipation as the coach assures them everything is moving ahead as planned.

The racers have trained, trained and trained some more. They’ve met hurdles that seemed far too high. But through perseverance and dedication, they are nearing the starting line.

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The Fine Art of Following Up

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Nobody likes to be nagged. Whether it comes from your mom, your spouse, or your boss, it may have more to say about the nagger than the naggie.

To be a good project manager, one must find ways of following up that yield results over resentment. As I’ve discussed in previous blogs, a role of a project manager is to make sure a project completes on time, at or under budget and within scope. I also like to add a fourth element and that’s to maintain a positive, productive working relationship with all the stakeholders on a project. I’m happy if no one dies or is incarcerated as a result of a project I’ve managed!

Projects can easily get off track. Especially during summer, project participants go on vacation, take days off for holidays or generally are away from the office. Yet the project remains. So it is with our Website Refresh project.

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Time Marches On

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How do we predict how long it will take to <fill in the blank>? When it comes to initiatives or activities that have been done before, experience plays a pivotal role in determining outcome. On the other hand, luck may play just as much of a role in the end.

I’ve managed dozens and dozens of projects over the years. Based on my years of experience, I should be able to more or less accurately predict a project’s timeline. I also know that every project is different and, while I’m pretty good at identifying risk factors at the start of the project, there will always be something that comes up that no one thought of before. A bit like Murphy’s Law, but we’ll call it Whipple’s Hypothesis for now.

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It Always Starts Small

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It’s called Scope Creep. It happens when someone says ‘we need a new dishwasher’ and seven months later, after walls have been removed, new cabinets have been set in place and new appliances hooked up, that you realize the $900 dishwasher cost way more and took a lot more time. Classic scope creep!

Most project managers recognize scope creep is happening when someone says, ‘Well, while we’re doing this anyway, let’s <fill in the blank>.’

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Communicate: Why bother?

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Do you remember playing the Telephone Game as a child?

It’s the game where someone whispers a story to the next person and the whispering continues around the circle until the final ‘receiver’ relays the message to the entire group. Most of the time, this is followed by laughter as the story details have changed dramatically with each new receiver on the other end of the telephone line.  The grapevine or the water cooler can be metaphors for the Telephone Game played out in adult conversations.

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What is Project Management?

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Hope is not a plan.

I hope it doesn’t rain today, but I plan to take my umbrella just in case.

At the heart of project management is a hope or dream that, whatever the outcome, it will be positive and timely. The larger the project (dictated by number of people involved, amount of time needed to complete the project or general complexity of achieving the project goal), the more “project management” is needed.

Millions of projects are undertaken each year with little more than the final goal in mind.  Many of those will reach the goal with little more than an Excel spreadsheet of tasks and a person with the drive to see the mission accomplished.

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