I help out with coordinating social events at my church. If I remember correctly, I believe my husband volunteered my services. We recently had an event called an Eat n’ Greet where we gathered people in groups of 8-10 in homes across our town. The evening consisted of appetizers and mingling.
At first glance, the event appears simply to plan. From a financial standpoint it was, because guests and hosts alike provided the appetizers. From a planning standpoint, however, there were several factors that made this event tricky to plan. LIsted below are the main tasks that needed to be completed prior to the event:
- Choose a date and name for the event
- Decide how the event will be promoted
- Gather enough hosts for the event (‘enough hosts’ was an unknown number until the deadline for signing up for the event)
- Gather RSVPs through a website similar to evite (http://new.evite.com/#home)
- Create groups of 8-10 people and assign to a host
- Send out reminder emails for hosts and attendees
- Gather feedback
Now that you have a brief understanding of the project, I’d like to look back and see what modifications could be made if this event were to be held again in the future.
What contributed to the project’s success or failure?
The main objective of the event was to give people the chance to get to know others and begin to build deeper relationships. While the overall event was a success, I found that the experiences of individuals depended deeply on the host and the make-up of individuals that attended a particular home. When grouping together individuals that may not know each other it is almost impossible to know if people will mingle well together. That aspect of the planning was out of my control. However, choosing hosts who are willing to go out of their way to make others feel welcome is something that can be controlled. I found that those who had hosts who were proactive in making everyone feel welcome and included rated their experience as extremely positive.
Which parts of the PM process, if included, would have made the project more successful? Why?
The last day to RSVP for the event was a week an a half prior to the event. The hope was that this would leave a few days to break people into groups and send out reminder emails 4 or 5 days prior to the event. This would have worked out fine, but many more people RSVPed in the final 2 days which required me to find 4 more hosts. In retrospect, it would have been much better to plan to have too many hosts than too few. If a host was not used, they easily could have been assigned to attend someone else’s home. Estimating how many people would attend the event was not smart planning on my part. In essence, what occurred is something project managers refer to as ‘scope creep.’ The event ended up accommodating over 30 more people than expected. A smart project manager is not surprised, but has planned ahead, when unexpected changes need to be made.
Naomi-The event sounds great! I love the ideas involved, and I understand how difficult it is to plan for those things. I can see that you went into the project with a plan. However, through the event, you saw how RSVP's normally work. In today's world, it is hard to get people to commit. With that in mind, let's look at the PM concepts we have been learning. Did you have a team working on this, or was it just you? For future events, would you employee a team? How would you communicate information to them, and how would you prepare them for these unforeseen instances? (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer,Sutton,& Kramer,2008). Also, since you saw that most people didn't RSVP until the last minute, would you move the RSVP date? Sooner? Later?
ReplyDeleteGreat analysis here. I look forward to hearing more.
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
Learning from this experience, I figure that you have started to plan for the next one. This is an interesting activity and bearing in mind your stated objective can develop into a big project. Sometimes people tend not to be unaware of the negative impact their “no response” reply has on a project.
ReplyDeleteI am unaware of who made up the project team but I would like to suggest that representative of community teams who could mobilize others may have helped to create buy-in by those areas most affected. As in project management, it was a good idea that you listed the activities needed to be accomplished, but as we move into the next stage, of creating the Work Breakdown Structure, the roles and responsibilities must feature. Great ideas!