Project Post Mortem

Project Post Mortem
So this week in Project Management 6145; I am writing about a project that I took part in while I was a teacher, since I have no real world experience in the field of project management I will use a personal experience.  Are you like me and wonder what a project post mortem is?  Because the word post mortem is usually associated with death and we all know that is a tough topic I found this definition by Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton and Kramer 2008,  a post project evaluation, or project postmortem, is an assessment of project results, activities and processes in order to do the following:

-Recognize project achievements and acknowledge people’s contributions.
-Identify techniques and approaches that worked and devise steps to ensure they’re used again in the future.
-Identify techniques and approaches that didn’t work and devise steps to ensure that things are handled differently in the future (p 404).

While I was in Cleveland Schools we had to change how we taught.  A change had come and there was no time to be a resister.  The project scope was to begin to document students work in portfolios back in 2000.  The objective of the rollout of portfolios was to make teachers more accountable when teaching and to also be able to better inform the parents of their child’s progress. 

The deliverables for this project came from the district CEO who provided each school with 4” binders for each student.  As teachers we had to label the binders with students names; we had to have clearly labeled sections for students work to into and then develop a system for the students to add to their portfolios as well as the teacher adding evaluations and assessments. 

I found that the portfolios were an excellent communication tool to use with the parents because they could see actual progress or areas in their children’s folders.  As a teacher I no longer had to depend on giving subjective information to parents about their child.  I think that the portfolio provided the parents with an objective view of their students work.

I was proud of my work with the portfolios because the system worked once I learned how to invite the students to add some piece of work they wanted their parents to see and also once I learned to take time to add assessments and other types of work like stories the student wrote from the drafting stage to the rough draft to the edit and finished product.  The portfolios were invaluable to the student as well because they could see how much they had learned and how much they had grown in terms of processes they had done in terms of early in the year the work was nascent but with each semester they could see where they were actually learning and improving.

The most frustrating part of the portfolio introduction was learning how to stay organized and finding time in an already time crunched day to actually sit down and add work to the student’s binders.  The most gratifying part of the project was when I could show parents what their children had learned.  If I could wave a magic wand and change anything I would not because as a first time experience with building portfolios I think it went extremely well for me.

I think that the stakeholders were pleased with the work we did as teachers in order to maintain individual examples of students work in binders.  The principal and regional teams would come to visit the classrooms to see if we had implemented the portfolios and if we did then we did not have to worry about receiving a reprimand for not complying with the program.  Complaints from parents begin to decrease because now teachers had solid proof of what actually went on during their child’s day. 

Do I believe that the managers i.e. the CEO and the principal were successful in their efforts to create portfolios were successful; the answer is a resounding yes.  The deliverables which were the binders for the student work arrived on time, we provided with dividers for each class and I think the teleconference went well for the initial startup of a new process in tracking students’ progress.

References:

Greer, M. (2010).  The project management minimalist: Just enough pm to rock your projects! Laureate International Universities.
Portny,  S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, M. S., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M. and Kramer (2008). Project Management: Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling Projects. Wiley Pathways 2nd edition.  Wiley.