Oly Reflection Journal 1 Feb 2010

Oly Reflection Journal

By taking Project management module, the author has learnt the importance of time. The author realised that every project is a time critical mission. On 24 January 2010, the group should attend a web meeting. However, the author has totally forgotten about it. Therefore, the group was not able to proceed without the author to coordinate the meeting; the team ended up wasting time.

Following the schedule and keep promises about time is a practice of discipline, self-awareness, and respect for others. A person can only gain trust from others by first keeping promise, especially one which is time critical. When the author remember about the meeting, it is already too late, time will never go back.

The author also learned self-motivation skill. No one else can inspire him if he is not self-motivated. The author motivated himself to balance between his studying, personal time, commitment for employer and family leisure. While time passes by, the author finds gaps between time to complete the assignment; gradually the author delivers the product. For this assignment, no one act as the manager or supervisor to give deadline, goals, award or punishment; the author has to be self-supervised.

The author is currently in his first semester of the final year. This is the first time the author become a part time student. The author experienced that doing part time requires razor sharp time management. The author appreciates this opportunity as a training to manage time effectively.

Around January 25, the author felt that time passes very fast, and the deadline of project is approaching. The author has no other choice but to decrease the time for entertainment, and sacrificed some of personal and family time, in order to catch up with time.
Time management skills helps the author to respect and keep promises to appointments in any projects, because the author will meet clients, CEO of companies, or even Prime Minister in the future. The author will lose chances forever in lifetime by missing an appointment.

The author will use time management tools like spreadsheets and collaboration software, examples are Google Spreadsheet, Facebook Calendar and Huddle.net Workspace. The author can use these tools to upload planned schedules online, and share part of the calendar to colleagues, project stakeholders, friends, and family. Therefore, others can see his activities over specific period of time; the author can accept or reject an appointment based on the agenda in the calendar.

When completing PMGT assignment, the author treated his team mates as customers. The author believed that by doing the author’s best, the customers will be satisfied. Besides, they can perform better if a good product is delivered to them. For example, the author is responsible to create Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Other team mates need WBS to create cost estimation table, Gantt chart, and others. The author took just 1 day like what he had promised to other team mates to finish WBS. Therefore, other team mates can deliver their product in time as well. In other hand, the author felt satisfied working with team mates, because they treated the author like how the author treated them.

In real business scenario, the author can bring more customer satisfaction to the business. If the author’s colleagues treat each other as customers, the company will grow better in shorter time. “Customer satisfaction number one” becomes the shared assumption, which yields the result of Total Quality Management, because all employees know how to satisfy customers by meeting or exceeding their expectations when rendering a service or delivering a product.

With this inspiration, the author can treat everything related to work as the author’s own work. That means the author is responsible for the job’s outcome, no matter success or failure. The author will not blame other people when comes to any failure in any aspect of living.

The author realised that life can be better by improving a little a day. The author strives for continuous improvement when doing PMGT assignment, by setting goals, then plan strategies to achieve them. For example, the author planned to complete justification for assignment and discover mistakes and omissions. The author also realised that learning goes on for the entire life. The author will continue to learn and explore skill sets in the field of Project Management even the author has finished assignment for PMGT.

Things can also be improved by self-appraisal. The author always ask himself is there anything wrong with the product that the author delivered, can it be improved, or there will sure be something missing even if it looks perfect. By asking these questions, the author can correct minor mistakes in the product, thus improving its quality to win customer’s confidence. Other than that, the author listens to others’ opinion. Opinions that hurt are the best opinion for improvement. The author did not rebuke the opinion, but thanked the person who gave it, and accepted the opinion appreciatively and thankfully.

There was once the author rewarded low in a class tutorial, the question was related to activities done during project scheduling. The lecturer gave comment that too little points were explained in the answer. The author looked for mistakes he has done, and referred to answers given by classmates, and realised that the lecturer’s comment was true. Therefore, the author will be able to give better explanation during exam.

The author experienced that little more effort can make a big difference. The author tried to attend all classes, and be early in each class. The author found that he benefited from better preparation for absorbing knowledge, calmness during the class, and better comprehension of the lecturer’s teaching.

Lastly, the author learned to discipline himself to do a little work a day to achieve a complex task. This is very important for a successful final year project. The author needs this discipline to deliver a good product in any undertakings in the future.

(987 words)