Making a Party out of Project Management: Chapter 6 - Getting the Party Items Ready

Project Execution

With all the plans in place, it was time for Abby and her team to start setting up for the party! It was so exciting for all of them to finally start executing everything they had planned together. Abby felt a great sense of excitement and anticipation, but along with it, some nervousness. This was the big time when work would be done and money would be spent, and it would be a lot harder to stay on track if things didn’t go well. Thankfully, Abby knew she had good plans, and that part of project management is tracking progress and adapting those plans as the project unfolds. So, the fact that they were starting the work wasn’t too stressful for her, or anyone else on the team.

“As we start the work activities on this project, I want to thank all of you again for taking the time to help me with all of this. It would be way too much for me to take on alone, and you guys are really showing me what friends are for,” Abby beamed as she told her friends in their first meeting of the project’s execution phase. She really was so happy that they had her back for something as important as her little brother’s birthday party.

As planned earlier, Abby gave everyone some safety training for how to safely perform activities like moving picnic tables and handling hot items or sharp tools. While she admitted a lot of the things she said were common sense, Abby wanted to make sure everyone had a fresh reminder to be safe and keep others safe during the project work.

“I know it sounds silly, but you’d be amazed at how often people forget that,” said Abby, recounting a story from the first aid unit of the health class she had taken during the previous school year.

After the safety briefing, Abby’s friends were eager to hit the ground running. Before she had assigned the work tasks to her friends, Abby had decided she should ask people if they want to do a particular job instead of just requesting them to do it and even give people a choice of jobs if it was convenient. While she knew they were happy to help her in any way necessary, she still thought it was important to make sure they were doing work they actually wanted to do. This is an example of how interpersonal skills could help to make the team more motivated and dedicated to their work assignments by allowing people to have a say in what work they do.

“Okay, so here are the tasks that I have for all of you to help me with,” Abby said as she e-mailed the task lists that she had made for each person, for their reference. “Let me know if you have any trouble reading these lists on your phones and be sure to go down the list from top to bottom instead of skipping around, as the first task on your list might have to get finished before the second or third task on someone else’s list can start. If you get stuck on anything or start running into a problem, let me know right away so I can come help you with it.”

In addition to diligently performing tasks in the correct order, Abby also asked her friends to observe some other ground rules as they started working on the party. She asked that they:

1.      Measure twice, cut once. This would save time and avoid wasting materials during activities like making the party decorations.

2.      If unsure how to do something, ask for help. Asking for help is nothing to be embarrassed about, and nobody is expected to know everything.

3.      Embrace change and be flexible. As work is getting done, there are many possible reasons why people may have to be reassigned from one job to another or asked to do different tasks.

With tasks in hand, everyone went to stations that Abby and her parents had set up the night before to get to work. Abby walked around and did one last check at each station to ensure nothing was missing and everyone was able to proceed with their first task. As different pieces were produced, she and her dad would move items between tables as they were finished; Katie, Jess, and Hannah put pieces of candy into bags that would be given to everyone attending the party to take home afterwards, and some extra bags that would serve as balloon weights. At the other table, Benjamin was cutting ribbon for the balloons while Jason and John tied the ribbons to the balloons and the candy weights that would hold them down. Having everyone on the project team working together in the same area like this is known as collocation, and this is helpful both for management oversight of work and for team members to be able to work together effectively and help each other to overcome obstacles.

Abby gave Jason and John some training on how she wanted the balloons tied with the ribbons, so that they would leave a few feet of ribbon at the end. She then also trained Benjamin on the second part of his job, which was to curl the ribbon with the edge of a metal ruler her dad had provided. This job was a little tricky to do right, so she wanted to demonstrate and coach him through it with a few practice strands of ribbon. Soon, he was a pro at it and the ribbons had a playful twirl coming down from the balloons. Providing training like this to ensure everyone had the tools and skills to do their work on the project is called developing the project team.

On larger projects, teams may have recognition and reward programs to recognize when a team member works especially hard or makes an important contribution during a specific period. Here, Abby wanted to avoid elevating any one of her friends over the others; the group was small and close enough that she felt like it would be smarter to recognize the team as a whole and to personally recognize and appreciate the work that each of her friends was doing. Giving them a sincere thank you or complementing the way they were working would show team members that they were valued and would motivate them to continue working toward a successful outcome.

Besides ensuring everyone was getting work done effectively, Abby also assessed the way in which people were interacting with each other and how they were approaching problems. Observing how project team members do their work and interact with others is important for understanding each person’s strengths and weaknesses, or how they prefer to do things, for the purpose of ensuring they’re in the right roles and that they are placed in the right roles in the future. In addition to watching how they work to gauge their ability, Abby asked people why they chose to work the way they did. She also asked if they thought they had been assigned the right work or if they thought they could be more helpful doing another task. Watching the team work and asking questions like these are examples of personnel assessment tools that help a project manager to be an effective team leader. Using these tools helped Abby to better understand her team’s ways of working, as well as to ensure everything was going well for them and that she would be aware of any adjustments needed.

As everyone worked away on their tasks, Abby kept an eye on how well they were meeting quality requirements, keeping to the schedule, and efficiently using the right amount of materials to keep costs under control. Was the team working well as a whole? Were there any training needs or other assistance Abby needed to provide that wasn’t noticed in individual assessments? Abby asked herself questions like these as part of performing an overall team performance assessment, measuring the quality and timeliness of completed work items to ensure the team was on track to finish their work on time.

As work went on, Abby continued to go around to make sure everything looked good. She saw that one of the balloons seemed to be barely secured to its candy bag, so she took a closer look.

“Hey, John,” she mentioned. “Most of these look good, but this one here isn’t tied to the bag very well. It looks like there are seven pieces of candy in it and there should be just six, so feel free to remove a piece when you see this so that the balloon cord can be tied on correctly and won’t come loose.”

“Oh, thanks for pointing that out, Abby,” John replied as the cord slipped free. He grabbed it before the balloon could float up to the ceiling. “I thought one of those was hard to work with, but I didn’t know it would be okay for me to do that. Thanks for letting me know.”

Right there, Abby was assigning tasks, reviewing work and providing feedback as part of managing the project team. She knew what work needed to be done and what different items should look like, and she ensured that her team was making items correctly and helping them out when they needed it. In this specific case, Abby was performing quality control by reviewing the work on the balloons and identifying a case where the work was done differently from the expected standard. When she did this, her feedback alerted John to the issue, and he then engaged in what is called defect repair to ensure that balloon wouldn’t come free from the bag again at the party and float away into the sky.

With her friends performing their work smoothly, Abby came into the kitchen to find her mom already hard at work.

“Wow, Mom!” Abby exclaimed, “It’s so exciting that you’re starting the cake now!”

“I know you wanted to help but would be too busy getting everything else together, so did you get the design finalized for me to use?”

“Yup! Here you go. Here’s a picture of the cake design, and I even made a checklist to help you get through it a little faster.”

Abby had made an intricate baseball field design, using things like green coconut for the turf and dots of colored icing for the fans in the bleachers. Because it was complicated and had to be ready in time for the party, Abby drew a picture and made a quality checklist, as well as a list of quality metrics for her design so her mom could make sure she didn’t miss any details of it.

As Abby’s mom baked the cake and got it decorated, she marked the checklist on her tablet with the completion of each step. She ensured the cake was baked by poking a toothpick in and pulling it out (inspection of the cake for doneness), and she marked each decoration item complete as it was finished, like when she finished putting the colored icing fans in place. This sort of work performance information would all be kept as part of the organizational process assets, as reference information for how this project went and how a future project might be done. By confirming each checklist item as successfully completed, Abby’s mom created a record of quality control measurements. Abby took a look at the cake and reviewed the checklist, confirming the cake as a verified deliverable that met her specifications. With this, Abby updated relevant project documentation to reflect the completion of the cake, including marking the cake making task complete on the project schedule.

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Communication is at the center of every project manager’s job, and this was no different for Abby. Communicating with her team didn’t stop with handing out the task lists for her friends to complete. She had to give them feedback and ensure they knew to ask her if they needed any help or finished their tasks sooner than expected. Even as they worked, Abby had to keep checking on everyone to make sure they were able to continue working smoothly, promptly helping or gathering supplies if anyone needed it.

Abby used many ways of communicating with everyone to run her project. She e-mailed directions to the park so everyone would know where to go for the party. She submitted an online shopping order to the party shop to have the bouncy castle. When a significant job finished, Abby checked off that item on her to-do list and sent a notification to Mom and Dad based on that updated the project’s work performance information. While Abby used her tablet for a lot of communication, she always made sure to talk to people face to face whenever she could. She knew that ultimately, her team of people was getting the work done, so she wanted to maintain rapport and keep everybody feeling dedicated to the project. Talking face to face is the best way to talk when information doesn’t need to be written down for reference later. It makes communication more human and more connected, and the tone and body language also communicate a lot more than words alone.

A big key to a project manager’s success is knowing the right mode of communication for the right situation.

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While her friends continued to work on the scope items for the party that afternoon, Abby decided it was time to review her plans for managing the stakeholders of the party to ensure they were engaged the right amount. Stakeholders have the most influence at the start of a project and gradually lose it as the project gets closer to the finish. At this point, support from stakeholders was crucial to the success of Abby’s project. She looked over her stakeholder register and plans for stakeholder management and communications, and decided it was time to reach out to the different stakeholders. With her list of stakeholders and their role and level of interest in the party preparations, as well as guidance from the communications plan about the best way to contact them, Abby was all set to reach out to people and ensure their involvement at the right level, which is called managing stakeholder engagement.

Based on her communications plan, Abby needed to make sure Nathan’s friends and relatives had all the information they would need about the party. Starting with Nathan’s friends, Abby mailed an invitation to each of them, with a bright green sticker urging them to keep the party a surprise for Nathan. Their job was really just to show up a few minutes early and be part of the big welcome for Nathan, and they could play catch to pass the time while they waited for the party to start. Abby let them know they didn’t need to bring anything, they could just show up and have fun.

With Nathan’s friends informed and ready to do their part, Abby started by contacting the relatives by text or phone, asking if they could bring a certain dish to share at the birthday meal. Over the years, they had brought a lot of great recipes to family gatherings, and she knew these dishes would be a great addition to the meal. There was a risk that someone would be late to the party if they had to prepare something, or maybe they’d be bummed if not many people ate what they brought, but Abby thought it was worth the risk of inviting aunts, uncles, and grandparents to contribute to the party. She knew that just the chance to do that would make them feel good, and the benefit outweighed the risk.

Next, Abby called the party shop to ensure everything was still going to be ready as planned. Unsurprisingly, Brian told her everything was all set and she wouldn’t need to worry about it, but she also wanted to know if there was any other information that he needed to set up their equipment. They confirmed the specific pavilion and the meeting time, along with all the items, just to make sure nothing would be missing. Abby felt good about the vendor being ready to do his part at the party.

All stakeholders have now reached the desired level of stakeholder engagement.

To make sure everyone was involved in the right ways and that they were happy with how the party was developing, Abby didn’t wait to follow up with stakeholders. She had made a plan ahead of time to remind herself who to communicate with, how often, and by what means. Not only was she counting on several stakeholders to make the party successful, including her friends on the project team, but she also wanted stakeholders like her parents to rest assured that everything was well taken care of. Keeping stakeholders informed of the status of the project is important for keeping them from interfering or asking so many questions that it becomes hard to get work done.

So, the next stakeholders Abby engaged with were Mom and Dad. She frequently updated them on her plans for the party, but now she was about to give them a tour of everything that her friends were working on.

“Here’s the WBS we made together to organize everything we’d be doing for the party. You can see everyone at the tables doing these things, and they’re all making good progress on their work. Also, I called the party shop, and they have everything ready to bring to the park and set up tomorrow,” Abby explained to her parents.

“This is great, Abby! Clearly, you’ve put a lot of thought into this, and I feel like you’ve definitely got this under control. I’m glad we gave you the chance to put on this party for your little brother,” Abby’s mom exclaimed, beaming with joy.

Just as Abby thought she had all her stakeholder interactions taken care of, one relative called back asking if she could bring a dish that someone else was already bringing. As much as Abby didn’t like to say no, she recognized that having two people bring the same thing didn’t really make sense. This was a situation that called for a technique called conflict resolution. To allow the first person to bring the dish and this relative to still have a chance to make it, at least eventually, Abby offered to let her relative bring it for Abby’s own birthday coming up in a few months. After the call, Abby noted this situation of two people asking to bring the same dish on her list of lessons learned for managing stakeholder engagement in the future.

To wrap up managing stakeholder engagement for the time being, Abby sent notifications to everyone regarding their points of interest about the party. She e-mailed her aunts, uncles, and grandparents a spreadsheet of who was making what dishes for the party meal for their reference, copying her parents so they would be informed about this as well. After they had some time to work, Abby also checked on how much more her friends had done. She marked items in her project plan complete and gave Mom and Dad another update so they would stay current on how much progress had been made. The process of following up with stakeholders about their involvement and informing them of other events around the project would continue to happen regularly until it was time for the party to start.

Everything was all set to bring to the park in the morning to finish setting up the party before it would start. Abby went over her schedule and other plans to ensure everything was up to date and that everything that was supposed to get done by then did. She processed a few change requests that she had agreed to during the day and informed people as her change control plans instructed; when someone asks that a change be made to how the project is done, the project manager must update documentation to show how that change impacts the project schedule, cost, and any other aspects of the project affected by that change, as well as to relay that impact to the right stakeholders. By the time Abby finished performing integrated change control by ensuring all her plans reflected the change requests and information updates, she was very tired from all the work, but she was also happy everything was coming together so well and ready to be finished the next day!

Next post in the series: Making a Party out of Project Management: Chapter 7 - Setting Up the Party at the Park