Project Management

Immersed in a real world project students must complete tasks on a tight time schedule while working with a small group of people in a new and often unpredictable environment.  Thus, project management was seen as a primary component of student development while participating in international trips.  Project management included any action that involved managing time, money, people and other resources appropriately. Students exhibited growth in their ability to efficiently organize the human resources of the team as well as to realize the importance of developing an information organization strategy.

Students also began to recognize the insider versus outsider perspective.   Through various observations they noted how they were viewed as outsiders, which was a weighty position that came with responsibility and a reputation, but one that varied across demographics.  Gaining an inside perspective into the community was seen as valuable and necessary for the project’s success.  Students with more travel experience were often at the forefront in devising management strategies, proving the value of experienced members.

Within this category the following subcategories emerged from student reports: scheduling activities appropriately, effective utilization of human resources, creation of an organization strategy, managing time, and insider versus outsider perspective.    

Utilize human resources effectively 

1.  I was sort of leading the group as far as the education component was concerned, while Luke, my co-leader, was heading up the construction team. And we sort of split up that way because we realized on the previous trip, that there is a problem getting the males of the community to respond to females. -Guatemala Trip Participant

2.  I felt like in this community, if something needs to be done, they just did it. They didn’t talk about it, they might go and knock on people’s doors and be like, “Hey, we need to dig this trench. Let’s go. Let’s do it.” And I think that was really exciting to be a part of, and I think they really saved organization and organization in the true sense, like some way of structuring people, they really saved that for important things. -Cameroon Trip Participant

 3.  I think one of the things that I’m going to take away from this is the importance of formulating a good team. I think we did a really great job with that because we planned the education and the construction component and because we had these two components, so very little time was wasted and we managed to get a lot done really skillfully. So I think it was just really important to have everyone onboard and have everybody like have a role and have something to do.  -Guatemala Trip Participant

Students working on-site at EWB projects often have limited resources at their disposal.  They are working under tight time schedules and had a small team of people to work with.  Effectively utilizing human resources was demonstrated to be an important component of project management.  Students demonstrated an ability to identify key project team members (quotes 1) and community members (quote 2) who could most effectively complete particular tasks, recognizing this as essential to making necessary progress on the many tasks involved in the project. Providing team members with a specific role, as indicated by quote 3, led to skillfully completed project components that utilized the knowledge and skills of students.

Creation of an organization strategy

4.  There was a lot of reevaluating and just adjusting our roles as we went along. Each night that we were in the community, we met at the end of the day to just talk about what we did, the data we collected, anything. I guess the community interactions and stuff. And planning for the next day. So it was kind of like debriefing and then briefing for the next day. -Guatemala Trip Participant

5. Actually, something we should do before surveying, if we want to have like one map, we should all go to these districts and draw up the map first and then maybe divide up the houses on the map because otherwise (a.) we’re going to be doubling up work or (b) we’re going to be missing houses.  -Cameroon Trip Participant

In order to effectively collect all of the needed information students had to develop an organization strategy.  They predetermined who would be responsible for collecting which information and then met at the end of the day to ensure everything went as planned (quote 4).  They had to document the information in a meaningful way so that it would make sense to themselves and others upon returning to campus.  For consistency purposes they often had to create multiple copies of information by hand and double check that all pieces of information were accounted for (quote 5). As documented in both group and personal reflection, students were learning how having a flexible project structure allowed them to make the most of their resources.

 Manage time appropriately

6.  Things happened slower than we wanted.  We knew we had a short deadline, and we had only a few days. And in that culture, things are slower. Like when you say you’re going to meet up at noon or whatever, it’s going to be at 12:30 that they actually show up. So adjusting to that made things slower. But at the same time, their eagerness to get started, they would do things without us knowing, because they thought it would help move things forward. -Guatemala Trip Participant

7.  Things changed. Things got delayed. We would end up changing our schedule to take more tests, or find out that the tests didn’t work. And we just kind of adjusted as things happened. -Cameroon Trip Participant

Developing time management strategies was exhibited to be a vital component of the international experiences within EWB.  As the students worked to implement their projects on-site, they were routinely faced with situations that fostered the emergence of unique cultural differences of the particular community, including the view of time as recognized by quote 6.   Becoming accustomed to flexibly managing time was deemed an important component of effective project scheduling, and it was realized that this ability to adjust was necessary, as seen by quote 7.  Multiple students witnessed this realization of managing time with regards to the local culture across various international locations.  This skill is also one that is highly transferrable to professional engineering as a project schedule is created by the clients and culture of a particular project and not only the scheduling preferences of the project team.

Understand insider versus outsider perspective

8.  I think another challenge was trying to become part of the community while also being a guest in the community, because they wanted to treat us well and to help us by cleaning our clothes and cooking food. And we had to balance the fact that we were actually paying for those services, the fact that we didn’t want to be waited on. -Cameroon Trip Participant

9.  Pastor Julius is one of the better-educated people in the community, but he isn’t from the community. And we hadn’t realized that… so that was kind of interesting, and he was the one that made sure that we were taken care of…And he was really facilitating this project because he has the greatest awareness of  — I guess this is going to sound really general – the world…So he definitely played the facilitator role in that sense. -Cameroon Trip Participant

Students from each of the analyzed project groups explicitly recognized the fact that, when abroad, they are guests in their project community (quote 8) and that communicating directly with the community was vital to accurately assess needs.  In order to become effective project managers, it was necessary to understand the community itself and rely on knowledgeable community members for project support, as recognized in quote 9.  Realizing that they come into the project with the perspective of an outsider enabled specific students to take the next steps in either learning to become part of the community, understanding how to assess community needs, or determining community members who could help manage the project.