Lessons Learned: Laguna Hills Leadership Seminar Oct 2009

In last year’s leadership seminar, the overall objective was to come up with projects based on the 2008 World Youth Day message of the Pope. This year, the objective was simply to teach the participants some project management concepts and tools.

The tools I shared with them are the following:
  • Stakeholder Analysis
  • Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
  • Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS)
  • Risk Register

We were given one 2-hour session each day for three days.

First session
  • 10 minutes explaining what a project is
  • 10 minutes spent dividing them into three groups, and asking each group to list down the top 3 projects among the people in their group. Among the 9 project, I selected a project for each based on its value as an example for the learning objective, as well as diversity (3 different kinds of projects)
  • They spent around 1 hour doing a workshop doing the following (a table with three columns)

    • Identifying their stakeholders
    • Identifying what each stakeholder contributes to the project
    • Identifying their leverage on each stakeholder (why would the stakeholder want to contribute to the project?)

  • I explained the concept of a sound business model (where each stakeholder is satisfied with the give-and-take). The example I gave was Gmail:

  • I then explained some additional things in a non-profit environment (eg, more non-tangibles, like the desire to serve and to make an impact).
  • Each group explained their table. Based on the sound business model concept, I gave some comments on their table (eg, would the sponsors really give you money based on the exposure you are giving them?)

Second session
  • I spent 15 minutes explaining the concept of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), including some examples
  • They then spent ~45 minutes creating a WBS for their project
  • I spent 10 minutes explaining what to do with the WBS they created (eg, Activity List, Schedule and Budget Estimates, Staffing, Project Control and Reporting and Risk Management)
  • We then talked about the Risk Breakdown Structure (RBS) for around 10 minutes
  • They then spent ~15 minutes to brainstorm on the risks of their project using an RBS
  • I then asked them to score the risks in terms of probability and impact. They got the product between the two scores, and I asked them to pick the top 5
  • We talked about mitigation and contingency plans for each of their top risks and how they impact the scope of the project
Third session
I was planning to show them the following videos on motivation and success:
However, electricity was cut due to typhoon Santi, so we decided to cancel the third session.

Observations
2 hours is too long for a session. Put a video at the middle.

What I'll do next time

Session 1
0:00 – 0:15 Project and Project Management
0:15 – 0:30 Identifying stakeholders
0:30 – 0:45 What is their contribution to the project
0:45 – 1:00 They would contribute because...
1:00 – 1:20 Leadership video 1 (Dan Pink)
1:20 – 1:30 The sound business model
Assignment: explain why your project has a sound give-and-take model

Session 2
0:00 – 0:30 Assignment
0:30 – 0:40 The WBS
0:40 – 1:20 WBS workshop
1:20 – 1:40 Leadership video 2 (Itay Taglam)
1:40 – 1:50 The uses of the WBS

Session 3
0:00 – 0:10 The Risk Breakdown Structure
0:10 – 0:45 Risk Identification Workshop
0:45 – 1:00 Quantitative Risk Analysis (give me the top 5 most severe risks)
1:00 – 1:10 Leadership video 3 (Richard St. John)
1:10 – 1:40 Risk mitigation and contingency planning (I'll lead the discussion and show the impact of risk planning on the WBS)
1:40 – 1:50 Feedback

Documents
Project Management Tools Cheat Sheet (Stakeholder Analysis, WBS, RBS, Risk Register) (I was not able to hand this out due to typhoon Santi...)

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