I used to work as a full-time staff member of a small, charitable, non-profit organization. After I left that organization a good friend of mine, who currently works there, asked me to do some volunteer work for the organization’s annual charity event, which is its primary fund-raising event of the year and features a silent auction and a raffle. Often, dignitaries and other luminaries from the Chicagoland area are honored at the event.
I started volunteering in mid-September and quickly developed an Excel project plan, complete with activities and due dates. But because the event is massive in terms of its many components, the development of the project plan seemed to be “too little too late.” I would not say that the project was a failure, nor would I say that it was a complete success either. Looking back, now 5 weeks later, I can see that the biggest problem was that we were constrained in a number of ways, each being quite impactful potentially. One of the constraints involved staff: the organization is quite small and we simply did not have enough staff or volunteers to help out during the “perform phase” of the project, consequently, the event chair and I spent nearly 18 hours a day working on details. Another constraint was finances. We lacked adequate funding to put on a really spectacular gala and had to resort to creating display items and decorations ourselves. Lastly we were constrained by ineffective communication systems with our board of directors. Our volunteer board members have full-time jobs of their own and are often unavailable for consultation and direction. However, for certain aspects of the event we could not continue with the work until a board member acted, or made a decision.
For sure a Constraints Matrix would have greatly helped us by forcing us to identify potential problems, assess their impact and develop contingency plans. I believe a Linear Responsibility Chart would have proved beneficial to us as well because, by using it, we could have involved the few staff members that were available much sooner in the project. And the Linear Responsibility Chart outlines tasks to be done and the person responsible. By using it we could have identified staffing gaps much sooner and been prepared to fill them by bringing on additional volunteers.
3 comments:
Sandra,
I enjoyed reading about your project and volunteer work is always nice to do, but I can definitely see it being an issue in terms of the project's success. I think you analyzed it very well and identified great constraints to the project. I agree that a Linear Responsibility Chart would have helped some, but I think a major constraint is that it is volunteer work and many people, as you mention, have full-time jobs they need to focus on. Identifying everyone's roles is important, but keeping people motivated and taking the volunteer work just as seriously as their full-time jobs is key. In addition to the forms you mentioned, I also think a Work Breakdown Structure would have been beneficial. It would be used to "see an overview of the project and hierarchical relationships of different work assignments (and perhaps tasks) at the highest levels" (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton, & Kramer 20008). This would be a good chart to create and post somewhere where the whole team can consistently see and be reminded of all the tasks that are needed to make the project successful.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
References
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.
Hi Sandra,
Will you be "volunteering" for this annual event next year? Do you think you could put into place all the good tools you were trying to use this year a little earlier? I understand about the volunteer board. I was a member of such a board for a Civil War event. We had a great group of people who had wonderful ideas, but the 12 member board ended up doing most of the work. We tried to implement committees to be responsible for the things assigned to the committee, but we had one co-president who was a micro-manager. She would assign things and then do them herself. I wish I would have thought it out like you did with the project matrix. Maybe then it would have been clearer to her to do only the things she was responsible for. All in all how did the event turn out for you? The normal person would not have noticed all the little things done or not done that a person behind the scenes would notice. I was surprised to find there are many "project matrix" templates out on the internet. I would have never looked for them before now. Thanks for the information!
Sheri
Hey Sandra,
Like Sheri I was surprised to see how many matrix's are out there and was surprised to think about how many matrix's I follow in my workplace without even thinking about it! I really liked the idea of a responsibility chart that way everyone would know what they are doing and what is expected of them! After reading your blog I came to a simple conclusion that I have thought of before but seems to fit in your case. For a project to be successful, there needs to be an adequate number of people to perform the task, money has to cover all areas or it is not fully finished, and lastly there needs to be communication. In anything really if there is a poor amount of communication there is a high success rate of failure.
Post a Comment