Good evening! 

I am glad to change the format of AZ Friends of Animals to include my daily prayer for animals.  I am including the link for Animal Angels where you can find daily prayers for animals of all kinds.  I like to begin and end my day in prayer to God to provide safety and rescue to all animals in need.  There just seems to be an unending need for this.  There is so much abuse and animal neglect in the world.

I hope that you are inspired with the daily prayers and that together, we can make a difference in the lives of animals. 

Kathy

AVImark software training video

I have posted my video training on the AVImark software that I reviewed for this class training project.  This was the first really screencast that I have created.

Here is the background for the creation of this video:

My love of animals is something that eventually comes across to many people and I tend to gravitate to people that are in the profession of helping animals.  A very good friend of mine is a veterinarian and is looking to start her own practice after years of working with another woman in her practice.  My friend, Colleen, is in the beginning planning stages, but wants to have everything in place as she looks to hire staff and get everything set up.  I will be assisting her with the business plan and the training for the office staff and vet technician processes.  This will be good practice to develop a training that could be used for her staff that will be handling the office procedures. This is only one of a series of trainings that will be necessary for this new office staff. There will also need to be some training for the veterinarian tech staff as well, but that will not be covered in this proposal.

Since the staff is going to be new to the office all at the same time, there will not be anyone with any direct experience with how things ought to be for this office but should have prior knowledge and experience of office management.  It will still be new territory for everyone.  Colleen and I will have everything set up and I will handle the installation of computer systems through a vendor.  Training on this will be a combination of face to face training with the staff at the front desk and the computer and an online video training to walk through the steps of the data entry.  A database will be set up for the online training modules with the all of the tasks of the office for reference.   There will be physical and online reference materials available after the training is complete for everyone and all of this material will be ready when the office staff is hired.  

An assessment of the new hire’s skill levels will need to be completed during the first day on the job (Morrison, Ross, Kalman, Kemp,2013).  It will be important to know if some of the trainings may be too basic in the data entry system.  If so, then just the face to face walk through should be sufficient.  The front office and reception procedures will be designed to go over in detail how to enter the data into the system which also drives the billing as well.  I will focus on just this one area because I will be able to limit the scope to the front office procedures. 

On the job training following up after the face to face and online trainings have been completed will take place for the first month the office is open.  I can stay and be on hand during this time on a part time basis to reinforce the procedures and to evaluate how the process is going. At this time, if any changes need to be made, we can work on the best practices and update the procedures.

 

References:
Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., Kalman, H. K., & Kemp, J. E. (2013). Designing effective             instruction (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

How come children’s birthday parties are the easiest examples for scope creep?  What starts out as a small party in the park explodes into a big party in the park with sports, piñata and M&M characters!  It ended up being very fun for everyone, but it was a lot more planning and cost than originally budgeted for.

I like Michael Greer’s (2010) definition of project scope:

Scope change may be defined as any addition, reduction, or modification to

the deliverables or work process as outlined in your original project plan. Change of

scope is normal — it’s not necessarily a problem. In fact, scope changes can be

beneficial when they allow the project team to respond sensibly to changing conditions

that exist outside the project. This can help ensure that project deliverables remain

relevant.

It makes me feel better about how the birthday party planning was managed and our end result of this huge party in the park.  Change is not necessarily a problem and luckily budget was not a huge issue or it would have been disastrous.

 

Here’s what happened:

Project Requirements and Scope           

The party was for my great-nephew’s 6^th birthday party.  I offered to help my niece with the expenses for the party and with the planning.  Jamal only wanted a few friends together to play in the park.  He did want an M&M birthday cake and for us to BBQ some hamburgers and hot dogs.  Hot dogs and potato chips were the desired menu items along with the chocolate M&M cake.

Here was the first project plan:

Jamal Birthday Party

• 10 kids from classroom and our family (10 or so)
• Picnic lunch in the park
• BBQ hamburgers and hot dogs
• Chips and sodas
• M&M themed birthday cake

 

We thought we would just keep it simple and small.  We hand made really cute invitations for his M&M theme that he wanted and we had Jamal deliver them to his classmates. When the people at my niece’s church heard about the party, they wanted to be invited too.   So we did invite them.  We made more invitations and handed them out to more people at the church.

 

 

Scope Creep

The above quickly turned into:

• 10 kids from classroom, our family, + 5 families from church (big families)
• Picnic lunch in the park
• BBQ hot dogs for the kids and chicken for the adults
• Chip, sodas, potato salad
• M&M themed birthday cake
• M&M piñata
• M&M plastic characters rented from the party store that will hold the kids prizes for the games in them.
• Baseball game

 

I was shocked by the time we were done!  It really exploded into a party that stretched my allotted budget from about $100.00 plus my gift to him to $300.00 plus my gift.  As the PM, I let the project get away from us because I wanted Jamal to have a nice party and for all us to have fun.  Which it was.

In order to learn from this mistake, I have done a Looking back and doing a project analysis, I can see that the original expectations were not realistic.  We really did make the part too small in size and should have known that it was not feasible to plan a small party with such a big family and leaving out friends from church. 

It was a lot of work, fun, family, and friends together and in the end, the kids had a blast that day in the park. The more the merrier, right?

 

 

 

 

 

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

Websites for Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

There is a tremendous amount of information to sort through about project management and instructional design.  I found a couple of sites that will be helpful to me and I hope to you as well.

 

The first is from a project manager.  Michael Greer is a PM who has a great website, http://michaelgreer.biz/pm-ID.htm, to give you help with a few different types of project work but the I.D is showcased separately.  He has a worksheet showing the 51 atttributes which are grouped together based on their functions such as at the beginning of a project, Phase I, Phase II and so on.  There are listed according to the 10-Step ID Project Management model from his text ID Project Management: Tools & Techniques for Instructional Designers and Developers.

 

He goes over estimating I.D time, cost benefit analysis, and success criteria.  I find all of this information very helpful.

 

 

Another webiste that has some great tools to use is the http://pm4id.org/ site.  This is the Project Management for Instructional Design site with some great videos to watch and the information is taken from a group of students that were in a PM  class at BYU. They were able to do a "remix of a pre-existing, openly licensed project management textbook" that was donated.   This site has some good examples of different project cost estimating methods and compares Analogous and Parametric estimates for projects.  For example, Analogous means that if a similar project had a certain cost, it may be possible to assume that another project of similar scope and size would cost about the same.  

 

I hope you enjoy these websites and find them useful. 

 

 

The Art of Communication

 

 

 

 

The Art of Communication

 

Can a message delivered in 3 different formats be construed in three different ways by the message receiver?  That was the assignment this week and it included reviewing a message, the same exact message, that was delivered in an email, in a voice message, and in a face to face conversation.   The messages are from a PM who is requesting a report from a team member I made notes after reviewing each of the 3 examples, and surprisingly, found little difference.

 

Looking at the clues in each of the delivery methods, they all point to the same tone being expressed in 2 of the 3 3examples.  Surprisingly, the face to face had the least amount of urgency expressed.    

 

The first method I reviewed was the email communication. The example of the email message from Jan to Mark seems polite yet she stresses the need to received his written report.  She asks him for the report and uses the words “please” and tells him that she really needs his help.  In my opinion, the email does not permeate an angry tone.  There are no WORDS WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS which would imply yelling and no exclamation points which also can show anger or excitement!!! There is a good website the points out different email etiquette techniques.

http://www.netmanners.com/272/caps-formatting-dont-matter/

 

 

 The second method was a voice mail message to Mark is from Jane and she is politely asking for the report and states that she may be late with her report if she does not receive his. Still sounds patient and sincere.  I would not perceive this as angry or impatient but rather desperate. Almost a begging quality to her voice.

 

 

 The third method was the face to face communication with the PM talking over the cubicle of the team member. The face to face conversation with Jane seems more relaxed than the email but you can see the exasperation on her face and she is tired.  She is being polite and then gives him huge forced smile at the end.  Clearly the woman is going to snap any minute!  Give her the report fast.   

 

Reference:

• Ertmer, P., & Quinn, J. (Eds.). (2007). The ID casebook: Case studies in instructional design (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

 

Time Management

I found this video on time management and now to create a time management quadrant by Dr. Darryl Cross.  Very useful information and I am going to do this exercise for myself again. 

I encourage everyone to look at this because this information is very helpful in how to balance your life and prioritize so that everything can get accomplished!

Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

                                Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

 

             The credit card industry is ever changing and there was a time of growth in the 1990’s for one of the major card  issuers that I worked for.  I worked on implementation projects that allowed for the U.S issued card to be used overseas in the ATMs in foreign banks.  Each ATM system had to be converted to be able to communicate with the Funds Access System that is used for U.S banking networks.  There were many issues that were worked through and it got to be a relatively smooth implementation project after having a few under our belts. 

            There is one particular project, however, that stands out in my mind because it was one that had a major set back and was completed but long past the deadline and with a lot of expense that was over budget.

            The company was going to roll-out a new card product that was a clear credit card with a microchip in the middle of the card with a small magnetic strip.  If  my memory serves me correctly, the chip was tested so that point of sale (POS) guns could be pointed at it and it would work to capture the sale information and all the other information . The problem was that the ATM readers at the banks were not recognizing the clear card product, so our implantation project was brought to a halt.  We had to go back to marketing and all of the other stakeholders to work out a solution.  There was no way the card was going to work in any type of ATM.  The solution was that the first issue of the card had to be sort of an opaque color, which was the most transparent that it could be for the machines to recognize that card was inserted. 

            This was clearly an issue where all departments had not completely brainstormed the idea before deciding to go forward with the product idea, development, and implementation.

The post-mortem questions found in the Project Management Minimalist that analyze the need and feasibility of the project deliverables fits best with the issue that we had in this ATM project (Greer, 2010, p. 41).

The answer to the 3 questions in Greer’s Phase 1:

1. Did our needs/market analysis or feasibility study identify all the project deliverables that we eventually had to build? If not, what did we miss and how can we be sure our future analyses don't miss such items?

The answer to this question would have to be no.  The market study/analysis did not identify all deliverables.  This detail of the product for the bank ATMs and the feasibility they the card would work was not discussed in full detail in the beginning.  Marketing had a clever idea for a new card product and it was a project that did not originally include our Global Electronic Funds Services Department to make sure that the card would work in a major business segment.

2. Did our needs/market analysis or feasibility study identify unnecessary deliverables? If so, how can we be sure our future analyses don't make this mistake?

The clear card idea was agreed upon before it was truly researched for usage.  Without each department working projects in the same manner using all stakeholders from the beginning analysis phases, there will be issues.  As Greer mentions, there are 7 things that need to be addressed in the beginning phase of a project. They are:  First, figure out if the project is needed. That is, find out if it supports a: Market demand, a business or strategic initiative, a customer request, a technological advance, a legal requirement, or some other important organizational initiative (2010, p. 8). 

3. How could we have improved our need-feasibility or analysis phase?  For the project mentioned, the need-feasibility or analysis phase could have been expanded to include every possible scenario for the card.  Usage, acceptance, technology advance as stated above, seem to be some key factors that were missing.

References:

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.