Final Paper

Evan Fetro

Arizona State University

PMG 321

Dr. Pandya

April 26, 2023

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Part One

Since first taking the MindTools project management quiz, my project management skills

have developed in a few main areas. These include my awareness of time management,

management tools, agility, and leadership skills.

Throughout my life, I have always had horrible time management. When I was younger, I

was an “advanced” student and sailed through school with ease because I never had to study and

procrastination still awarded me A’s. Then, I started taking college classes and began having to

manage my time a little more, but still not at a calculated level. Fast forward to this point, and

I’m learning actual strategies to manage my time with the help of this class and others that I’m

taking. I first began using it with my schoolwork, viewing my classes as a project with each

assignment acting as a task to complete. I became deliberate with scheduling exactly when I

wanted to do things. The motivation behind this was my work schedule and dedication to

working out almost every day. It’s important to me to be disciplined.

Another area I’ve grown is my ability to use tools like a work breakdown schedule and

network diagrams. Though I haven’t used these in real life, I am more confident in myself to

manage a project if I had to right now. Tools like these were completely foreign to me only five

months ago, now I’m equipped with them to be better prepared in the future.

The third area I’ve seen growth is my ability to be agile as a project manager. In a real

project, uncertainty is the only certainty. I never imagined how much I’d have to be able to deal

with changes in scope and other problems that arise during a project. Through the course of

completing project assignments in this class and others, I see how the main difference between a

good project manager and a great one is their ability to deal with the unexpected. Using

techniques I’ve learned in the last few months, I am able to apply my knowledge at my job to
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increase productivity for myself and my teams. For example, if the store is oddly slow, we will

take the chance to get ahead on future tasks that we must get done just in case we don’t get

another chance until later. Another method would be capitalizing on some coworkers strengths

because of where they lack in skill. Sometimes you will end up with a crew that is less able, less

productive, and less motivated. It can be hard to get a team like this to be efficient but by using

them for what they’re good at, rather than focusing on what they aren’t, you’re able to get the

most out of them.

The final area that I see growth is my leadership. This is somewhere that I would say I

excelled in before taking any leadership or management class. I still believe this to be true, but

I’ve been woken up to how much more there is to learn and understand about leadership and the

people you lead. I’ve learned about more than a dozen leadership styles and theories now. By

seeing other routes to take, I can compare my own leadership style to ones I think I emulate. This

allows me to narrow down the necessary skills and methods to use when leading in those ways.

An example of this also comes from my job. I have coworkers that can often be difficult to work

with, especially when I have such high standards for myself that others don’t share. To be a

leader to these people, I need to do not what works just for me, but what works for others. I’ve

been more attentive to their habits and personalities to figure out what they want. This has helped

me out with my leadership and has made me more likable to them as well.

When looking at my own leadership style, I have made a few main observations. The first

of these is that I like to attack the main goal of the project first. If a product must be delivered

within six weeks, then that is the first priority of the project. If there is a strict budget of $12,000

and that’s all that's been granted, then I’ll be certain to keep the cost at or below that level. I first

noticed this in the Harvard simulations. When the triple constraint was established, there was
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usually one of the three that was especially important. As a project manager, you’ll have to make

important decisions and tradeoffs so you also must know what sacrifices can be made. This is

advantageous to me because if you’re unable to identify the greatest factor of success, you risk

suffering great losses that will permanently affect your project. This matter also connects to the

question of “what makes a project successful?” The question becomes very easy to answer when

you fail to complete the most important of the three constraints. If you are tasked with

completing a project with an ambitious scope and you complete it, will you be criticized for

going 6% over budget? Likely not. However if you reverse this scenario and complete the project

under budget but lacking in the scope, there will be repercussions when your product doesn’t

perform as intended.

Another observation I made was that I am fairly good at responding to my teams’ needs.

This is something I have felt fluent in before taking any leadership classes. Dealing with other

people’s problems is something I’ve never been one to shy away from, especially my teammates.

When completing the Harvard simulations, we were forced to respond to the emotions and

comments of our team, good and bad. When the team was under a lot of pressure, what steps

could I take to relieve some stress? When my team was comfortable and happy, how did I make

sure that it was sustainable? Generally, I did a good job at answering these questions quickly and

effectively.

Somewhere that I lack in skill has to be my actual time management and use of project

management tools. As I stated earlier, I feel more confident after getting a good introduction to

these methods, but my experience is limited to the few times I’ve used them in class. I know

more than ever, but I also know how much more there is to learn. If I were to be given an actual,

complex project, I would definitely struggle with organizing all of the work and scheduling.
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With that being said, I’m not worried by my own ability, but rather I trust my ability to work

hard and learn from experience. In a matter of one or two more uses, my ability will grow

exponentially.

In connection to my own workplace, there are certainly a handful of skills that I can

apply. I work at Starbucks which means there are no projects that really last longer than a single

day. This doesn’t limit my ability to work on projects, but rather the project complexity.

Obviously, there are only so many tasks to complete a project at a fast food restaurant. The

greater focus for my specific situation would be the leadership aspects of management.

Practicing my ability to compel people to do more, work harder, or work differently can be hard,

but it’s a skill that can be worked on for a lifetime. I’ve also been reading the book How to Win

Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. This has taught me a few skills about how to

appeal to people and get what you want. Ultimately, leadership is getting others to help you

complete your goal or a goal that you promote. This book is used as a resource to many people in

all industries by countless successful people. Through these classes, the book, and an acute

attention to detail in my personal life, I’m building my skills to prepare me for greater leadership

challenges and projects. At my job, I’ve been suggested by many supervisors to try to promote to

a leadership position. As we’ve learned in this course, the position isn’t what makes you a leader,

it's about what you do regardless of your position. The recommendations are flattering but the

reason they give the idea is because of my ability to lead others at the same level as myself. I use

this as a mark of improvement, as evidence that my leadership skills are improving.

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Part Two

When preparing for the Harvard Project Management simulations, you must be able to

establish each of the triple constraints as early as possible. After you find out what the scope,

cost, and timeframe of a project is, you can then get a better understanding of what the project is

really trying to accomplish. This image you create will tell you how much money you can spend

per week, how long you can take to complete the project, and what the final product needs to

look like. This tip may seem like a very simple and even obvious one, but it’s easy to lose sight

of your weekly targets when you have other issues to balance. In the Harvard simulations, there

are options like outsourcing that can reduce the cost by hundreds of dollars, but you’ll quickly

discover that this creates many issues and lots of confusion within your team. This is a trap I fell

into once before and learned from. With the scope, you can see what product is expected of you

and the area that you can excel in it. By overachieving on the scope, the project grade will be

much greater for what you overdeliver. In terms of the cost, it’s important to establish so you can

tell early on whether you will deliver under budget or over.

Ultimately, finding your triple constraint as early as possible will benefit you in the long

run by allowing you to make informed decisions quickly. When you make mistakes in the early

stages of your project, it’s easy to fall behind and end up chasing your own tail just trying to

catch back up.

My next tip is to be as agile as possible. It seems like common sense to allow yourself a

little bit of wiggle room with the budget and timeframe. If you perfectly calculate how long

something should take or how much something should cost, then there is zero margin for error.

This is dangerous in any project because in the real world, there will be no perfectly executed
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projects. All it takes is one person to show up late one day, then a task is pushed to the following

day, then so on. Managing uncertainty can be difficult and frustrating to deal with, but it’s better

to prepare yourself then to have to dig yourself out of a hole. In the Harvard simulations there

were various setbacks that would pop up to interfere with the project schedule and budget. It’s

critical to be ready for these unexpected events and to respond quickly and tactically. Some

examples of these setbacks include a loss of workers to competing companies, resource supply

being delayed, or even car accidents. These all negatively impact your project and force you to

balance more issues than initially planned.

Another thing that can happen could come from the upper management of your project.

In some cases, the competitors were set to release a product five weeks earlier than planned. This

forced us to do the same and speed up our project by five weeks to not get cut out by the

competition. The upper management can also change the scope in the middle of the project and

force you to complete more work than expected. Both of these instances show some possibilities

of what could happen in the course of a project. They’re realistic scenarios designed to prepare

you for the uncertainty of the real world.

To be ready for these circumstances, it’s smart to have more than “just enough” labor to

complete a project. It’s also smart to use more advanced workers who make less mistakes and

keep your project on track. Over outsourcing can also cause a load of problems so limiting that is

also smart. These steps not only mitigate risks, but they set you up for success when inevitable

problems arise.

My last and most important tip is to take notes and record your experiences when

completing each simulation. Be attentive to how every little detail affects your outcomes. How

many prototypes should you create? How many meetings should you hold? Should I just allow
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or encourage overtime? These are all important questions to ask yourself when fine tuning your

project management style. The best source of evidence is yourself. When you experience success

by doing x, y and z, you must remember what you did so you can emulate it in a future project.

This is true in real life as much as it is in the simulations. The great advantage of the simulation,

however, is that you can run through it as much as you want. It’s a sandbox for you to

experiment what works and what doesn’t. By recording your experiences, it’s easier to review

and see where you did well and where you could improve. This will expedite your growth.

If you enter the Harvard simulations with these three tips, establish the triple constraint,

be agile, and record your experiences, you will find success faster than I did. The most important

part is to apply yourself and take your time. Try to absorb every little thing like a sponge. These

simulations are a great opportunity to practice our project management skills in a safe way, with

no real money or lives on the line.

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Work Cited

Austin, R. D. (n.d.). Project Management Simulation: Scope, Resources, and Schedule.

Forio. Retrieved from https://forio.com/app/harvard/project-management/?x-epicenter-sso-

state=eyJyZXNvdXJjZUxpbmtJZCI6ICI1NzM3NTUyMSIsICJjb250ZW50QWNjZXNzT

W9kZSI6ICJmdWxsLWNvbnRlbnQifQ#/

Carnegie, D., Carnegie, D. D., & Thomas, L. (2022). How to win friends and influence

people: Updated for the next generation of leaders. Simon & Schuster.

How Good Are Your Project Management Skills? MindTools. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27,

2023, from https://www.mindtools.com/ah2gzrh/how-good-are-your-project-management-

skills