Reflection and Future plan

List three practice/concept you have learned in this class that you plan to use immediately in your work. Described the concepts and your plan. The concepts can be rather brief but the plan should have concrete actions and schedule.

This class provides much valuable knowledge that will be helpful at my workplace. DLI demands new projects everyday to enhance student’s better performance, but some projects are very successful, but some are a really waste of time and money. So, we need a good project management skill. Thanks to this class I have learned the good overview on the project management and the MS Project software skill. The fast Forward MBA in Project Management introduced the concepts on Project management very clear and easy. Among those new concepts this book addresses I would like to mention a few things that I think the most valuable for my work.

I am going to participate in Immersion curriculum development project starting from next week. It will have a project manager and 7 project team members. The sponsor is the school dean and the functional manager is the chairperson of Immersion department.
For this project I am going to apply the knowledge I have gained in this class.

The first thing I have learned in this class is the Work breakdown structure (WBS). Building a WBS helps to provide a detailed illustration of project scope, monitor progress, create accurate cost and schedule estimates, and build project teams.So, my plan is, first, to list the major products. Second, name all the tasks required to produce the products. Third, put work packages under different summary task headings for better visibility.

The second thing I think it is crucial in project management is to build a high-performance project team. A high-performance team has three components, which are positive team environment, collaborative problem solving, and leadership. In order to create positive environment we need explicitly stated ground rules, team members’ commitment, the ability to listen to solve problems, and the ability to effectively manage meetings. In order to build collaborative capability we need 1)problem-solving skills tied to an accepted problem-solving process, 2)understanding and applying multiple decision modes, 3)conflict-resolution skills, and 4)continuous learning. As far as the leadership is concerned, I think the most important factor in a high-performance team is leadership. When the team members do not trust the team leader, it is hard to create the other two components in high-performance team. This book addresses various things to create high-performance project team and what caught my eyes is active listening tips because the team meeting goes wrong when the team members want to express their own ideas without listening to others.

The last thing I have learned in this class is MS Project 2003. Using this software you can create a task list, set up resources, assign resources, view to work with project plan details in different ways, use reports to print project plan details, create a project plan and enter a project start date, and set the working and nonworking time for a project. Using this software I am going to create WBS and set up detailed resources to minimize risks and to balance the schedule, the costs, and the quality of the end product. This software will increase the chance to the success of this new project.