Project Management Case File #168

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From the course by University of Virginia

Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management

1560 ratings

University of Virginia

Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management

1560 ratings

Projects are all around us. Virtually every organization runs projects, either formally or informally. We are engaged in projects at home and at work. Across settings, planning principles and execution methodologies can offer ways in which projects can be run more effectively and efficiently. Project management provides organizations (and individuals) with the language and the frameworks for scoping projects, sequencing activities, utilizing resources, and minimizing risks. This is an introductory course on the key concepts of planning and executing projects. We will identify factors that lead to project success, and learn how to plan, analyze, and manage projects. Learners will be exposed to state-of-the-art methodologies and to considering the challenges of various types of projects. As a Project Management Institute (PMI®) Registered Education Provider, the University of Virginia Darden School of Business has been approved by PMI to issue 12 professional development units (PDUs) for this course, which focuses on core competencies recognized by PMI. (Provider #2122)

From the lesson

Ready, Set, Go: Project Execution

In our final week, we'll move from plan to action and consider the execution phase of a project. We'll learn about the earned value approach for monitoring and controlling progress. We'll consider the individuals who are executing the project and how their habits impact project progress. We'll discuss some alternative methods for project execution such as Agile, Scrum, and Kanban. Finally, we'll review and summarize the course, and our journey from project definition through execution and completion.

Project Management in the Wild1:00

Project Management Case File #1432:11

Project Management Case File #1686:24

Meet the Instructors

Yael Grushka-Cockayne (@grushkay)
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Darden School of Business

If you could imagine, here we are, ten years into building a 30 to 60

million dollar science center, and we're finally getting geared up.

We've got the partner that we need, and the developer says, guess what?

There's another big museum and we're going to put it right beside you.

The Children's Science Center is a local non-profit organization based here in

Northern Virginia.

We got started over a decade ago and

our mission is to instill a love of learning in science, technology,

engineering and mathematics among all children in our large community.

We had a vision for a world-class science center here in Northern Virginia.

And it was all about filling a gap.

In 2015, we opened our first interim operating site at

Fair Oaks Mall in Fairfax, Virginia.

And here at the Children's Science Center Lab we serve about 50,000 people a year.

And we continue to serve our community outside our walls, another 20,000 a year.

And we have very significant capacity challenges.

And we always knew that we needed a bigger science center for our population here.

We serve about 2.5 times the industry

average in capacity of visitors in our space.

So our great project going forward is building a full scale science

center that will serve children and adults alike ages 1 to 101.

We have a tremendous opportunity we have been given a donation of land

that is north of Dallas Airport on a major highway on Route 28.

And here we can build a science center that is both inside and out.

Because the development that we're building the science center within has

150 acres of natural park land along a major stream valley.

That requires a significant amount of capital and funding from all sources.

One of our great challenges had been attracting that strategic

partner that we need and we have found that partner.

They are a very large science museum that wants a large presence in

northern Virginia.

And it's a great relationship.

However, it's one that we have to take care of very carefully.

They're still in the process of deciding how much and

if they will make a huge investment in this effort.

And this is an eight-figure investment.

So this is not a small undertaking.

We are just beginning to enter our conceptual design phase and

building our master plan for what is this building going to look like?

What are all the galleries that are going to be within it?

And as we're starting that process we did bump into a bit of a challenge.

We sat down with the developer for one of our meetings.

And the developer shared that there will be another very large museum

that will be right beside us in the development.

And the architecture for the renderings that we've seen for

this museum are very distracting, very large.

It's hard to sell your museum when you have one that looks like a national

monument right beside you.

And so immediately we were worried.

And we didn't feel any better after talking to our partner.

They were not happy.

They felt like this was a big enough issue that we should consider walking away from

this developer.

Why would this developer put a big museum like that right beside us?

So it was a very tenuous moment, because, by the way,

it took us over a decade to get this land.

We turned over every rock.

We looked in every nook and cranny of northern Virginia.

We talked to every government entity, every developer, and this is it,

this is the place.

And so walking away is not an easy thing for us to do.

It actually, the solution started before we reach the challenge.

We made a really critical decision during this process to bring

in a museum design team that would be very favorable to our major partner.

And we used a design firm that they have used for many years, so

there was a lot of trust with that particular design group.

It felt like there was no way that we could have any problem or

any backlash from our partner because the partner's held in such high esteem,

everything that they had done for them.

The other part of the solution was the problem itself and

being able to back to the developer and say, yes,

that's exciting that there's another museum here and there could be a lot

of interesting synergies that happen at the museums once they're open one day.

That's wonderful, but we actually have a problem here and

we need to help to solve it.

We are not going to be able to get the buyin from our partner.

We're not going to be able to get the buy in from our funders in the community to

build our museum if we look like the ugly stepchild of this big fancy museum.

So we need to change something here.

So when we approached the developer the developer was very sympathetic to our

situation.

They did a great job of listening.

And between the designer, and the developer we went through a series of

iterations that looking at what are other sites in that large development,

it's a 500 acre development so there's a few choices.

And we were advertising a museum that would be a science center inside and out,

and so we needed to be closer to the nature trails.

We needed a prominent position in that development.

Our final solution is really a wonderful solution.

We have found a way to optimize our site in the development.

We have the large museum on one end and we have ourselves.

And we book end the retail village of the communities.

If you can imagine a mall, where Macy's on one end and their Bloomingdale's

on the other, and we each are anchoring the community at our future home.

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