Weekly Schedule
This artifact shows my skill in project management. It is a week’s schedule for a project for The First American Corporation. While at Neumont University, I have had plenty of experience in leading teams. I came up with schedules like this all the time, many of which covered longer ranges of time. This schedule is shorter because the project it was for was an Agile workshop. In an Agile workshop, there is more focus on supporting the customer and what they want rather than a set requirements document. Because of this, schedules were always changing.
Skills acquired: Working in Agile development while leading a team was quite an experience. The greatest thing I acquired from this was the ability to adapt in a fast paced quickly changing environment. I figured out what worked well in an Agile development team and what did not. It gave me the skill to try other types of scheduling as well as leading.
What went well: Our team worked well together. I got some really good anonymous reviews from people I led. This was my first enterprise project, so I got some good experience with real software development. Besides leading the team, I got some really good experience in requirements gathering and working with business in developing an end product.
Description of what you would have done differently: We had one person in the group who wasn’t very contributive to the group. That person hindered our group’s performance, but that was taken care of shortly thereafter.
Quarterly Schedule
Why artifact is included: This artifact shows my skill in planning for the long-run. It is a schedule of tasks and resources. Not only does it show my skill in planning for the long-run, but it shows my skill in planning concurrent tasks. This was a schedule that was edited slightly as time went on.
Skills acquired: On this project, I gained the ability to shift things around in a schedule when the original plan is off. Our team worked well and got our project finished. We were also the team that everyone else relied on.
What went well: Our team worked well together. I got some really good anonymous reviews from people I led. This was my second time leading a group. It was during this time that I learned that not everything is always going to go as planned. After learning that, I learned how to edit a schedule accordingly.
Description of what you would have done differently: I would have had a meeting with my group sooner. Half way through the project, some team members weren’t working. I called a meeting to talk about it. If I could have gone back and done it differently, I would have called the meeting sooner.
Scheduling Software
This artifact shows my skill in using different tools for software project management. It is good for estimating cost and benefit of a project. I also learned Gantt charts from it.
Skills acquired: On this project, I started using estimates for resources so I could calculate cost of the project if it were needed. I guessed an example cost in the beginning and the final match was pretty close.
What went well: I learned a new asset in project management, cost. Cost is very important to a project. No project can be completed without one. A project is successful when it I under budget and on time. This project taught me how to budget resources.
Description of what you would have done differently: I would have used a different program. GanttPV has its advantages, but I am normally used to Microsoft Excel for scheduling. I should have put my efforts into learning that.
