Dear Dr. Pochran and classmates,
For our first blog assignment, we are tasked with admitting our flaws and faults and conducting a project post-mortem. Greer (2010) shared that a project post-mortem is a reflective practice that allows team members to take stock at the end of a recent project and identify lessons learned, areas of strength, and areas of improvement. The goal of the project post-mortem is to not just celebrate what went well, but to take into consideration mistakes that were made in the last project, so they do not carry over into the next project (Greer, 2010). McAvoy (2006) shared that project post-mortem gives team members guidance and a chance to brainstorm solutions to problems that may again arise in the next project. I feel it is a way to be reflective and practice metacognition. McAvoy (2006) cautioned that it is imperative to remove all biases from this evaluative process of conducting a project post-mortem. Negative biases, especially, will make it hard to evaluate the project (McAvoy, 2006). Collier, DeMarco, Fearery (1996) shared that the post-mortem process must be well-defined because frank, honest, and real analysis of failure has the tendency to create a natural disincentive within the organization. However, a well understood and well outlined post-mortem process can help quell these fears (Collier, DeMarco, & Fearery, 1996).
Greer (2010) recommends the structure of a project post-mortem to be a two-step process that involves pre-prepared specific questions about the latest project that can allow the team members a chance to think and reflect. The second step is to conduct a meeting where all team members involved can discuss the questions and work together to compose a lesson learned list.
A project that I recently worked on was for the professional development committee that I am on for my school district where I am a teacher. As a sidebar, in my career as a teacher I have not volunteered to be on many committees, simply because I had very small children and I needed to get home to them as soon as possible when they were little. The committee was formed to plan for professional development days in the coming school year. We met several times and the committee even got pared down at one point. Our first goal was to plan for a January professional development full day for the entire district staff. The team leader, the new admin in our school, was in charge of selecting the format. She wanted to institute an ED-CAMP day. ED-CAMP is low cost, budget, bottom’s up approach to educator professional development, where the teachers participate in conference style gatherings of their choice of what to learn and then report back to the educational community in a laid back fashion (www.teachthought.com).
The successful parts of this process included regular Zoom meetings to discuss ideas, creating idea lists as a team, communicating ideas with each other over the Zoom meetings. The successful artifacts included the spreadsheet with ED-CAMP ideas placed into categories. The activity of meeting to plan was worthwhile. It was a designated date and time each month to get together. This was successful because everyone knew when and where to meet. Having the option to Zoom into the meeting from my home was also very convenient.
This project, planning for a full day of professional development, also had several unsuccessful aspects as well. Overall, I should note that the project did not get fully actualized. We did indeed have a full day of professional development, but our plans for ED-CAMP did not come to fruition. There was a tremendous amount of “work” for teachers to do that day including: selecting a new language arts curriculum. During our meetings, we agreed upon gathering ideas from our school buildings and teams about what type of ED-CAMP sessions to offer on the PD day. I began a spreadsheet that I shared out with categories on the top. I asked teachers to inquire with their teams about possible ED-CAMP topics, as well as put their own ideas on the spreadsheet. I put my own ideas and saw a few other PD committee team members add a few. I was overwhelmed by many of the committees follow-through with adding more ideas from their school buildings or teaching teams. I was given a deadline to create a Google Form with the ED-CAMP ideas to send to the admin to approve and share out before Christmas break. I completed the deal by creating the form with the ideas we had listed. I sent it to her on 12/23.
Because the PD day was scheduled to be in January, and we had winter break in the mix, the ED-CAMP style PD never got off the ground. We also had to begin to look at the new language arts curriculum that day as a K-8 group. This project was not that successful overall because of lack of time. To successfully get the ED-CAMP off the ground for that date, we would have needed to send out the Google Form, record the answers of our teachers, offer sign-ups for the actual ED-CAMP sessions we would be offering, set up the rooms, etc. Gathering the ideas and creating the spreadsheet and the Google Form were just the first steps in the process. I suppose the issue here was there was just not enough time built in from our December meeting to get the ED-CAMP up and running mid January with winter break in the middle of the timeline. As far as resources go, ED-CAMP is low/no cost and therefore it was not an issue. It was more an organizational issue and time issue that prevented us from being about to have the ED-CAMP on that date. The good news is that we have two more PD days this year and we are hoping to have the ED-CAMP up and running at one of those next two.
Amanda Valente
References
Collier, B., DeMarco, T., & Fearey, P. (1996). A defined process for project post mortem review. IEEE Software, Software, IEEE, IEEE Softw, 13(4), 65–72. https://doi.org/10.1109/52.526833
Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough pm to rock your projects. Laureate Education Ed
McAvoy, J. (2006). Evaluating the Evaluations: Preconceptions of Project Post-Mortems. Electronic Journal of Information Systems Evaluation, 9(2), 65–72.
Hi Amanda,
The Ed Camp PD sounds like an amazing way to send the day learning.
I was sad to read that it did not manifest as planned. I would agree with your assessment of where the breakdown occurred, there is not enough time between a December meeting and January PD to set the PD up correctly.
If you knew you would be holding the Ed Camp PD, what would your timeline look at for planning and executing the event? Would you have the final meeting one month or more than one month before the Ed Camp day?