Learning from a project "Post-mortem"

At a prior place of employment I was involved in a team that was task with creating a clinical instructors handbook for new and returning hospital clinical instructors. The handbook would include the RAD course grading system, uniform specifications, attendance policies, Hippa violations, clinical documentation, examination policies and clinical objectives.

Immediately, the project started falling apart because the assigned project manager demonstrated a lack of participation and put the entire project into jeopardy of being shelved. To my horror, I was selected as the new project manager. My first contribution to the project was to reassign the roles of the team members to the following groups: grading and clinical documents, examination policies and clinical objectives, uniform specifications, attendance, and Hippa violations, and finally presentation. 

Time was a key factor and major problem since we only had three weeks in order to complete the entire project, we had already lost two weeks of valuable time with the original project manager lack of involvement. Project managers sometimes have to work on two (or more) phases at the same time in order to meet established deadlines (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008). As the new project manager I found myself working on the define phase and the start phase simultaneously. We had to be careful doing two phases at the same time since, working on the next phase before completing an earlier one increases the risk that the task might have to be redone. Unfortunately, with the time constraints that we were experiencing we had little choice but to combine as many task as possible. 

Overall, even with me as the project leader the project ended up as a success, not as successful as we wanted but none the less a success. I believe that the project’s success was attributed to the redesign of the team member’s roles, one on one meetings and regular group meetings which kept us all on the same track and in constant communication with one another. 

I also made it a habit to stay on top of all purchases and any outside research. During the entire project I made sure that no team member felt that their contributions were insignificant and I thanked everyone at every meeting for their hard work and dedication because of the extra work involved due to the time constraints. By keeping the lines of communication open on all levels I believe that even though I was recognized as a new project manager I gained a degree of trust from the team members. 

We did a good job at achieving our main objectives but if I could return to the project again with more time, I would seek individual feedback from the hospital clinical instructors on the effectiveness of the final project. The three questions that should form the skeleton of any project post-mortem are:

• What went right?

• What went wrong?
• What should we do differently next time? (Buehring, 2012)

Armed with this feedback I would share it with all the team members and stakeholders involved with the project so everyone would understand the exact outcome of the project. In conclusion, I believe that instating a longer close phase and a project post-mortem is essential to defining what you have (and have not) achieved, to developing project management best practices and to enabling a sense of closure.

Buehring, S. (2012, May 09). How to do a Post-Project Review. Retrieved from http://mushcado.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/how-to-do-a-post-project-review/

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.