3 Class Exercises

A key element in the planning and design of an experiential learning activity is establishing a clear link between the exercise, the lecture, and the course-learning objectives. The relationship among the preceding class elements is the critical difference between the students viewing the exercise as a useful part of the class or seeing it as a waste of class time (Olsen, 2006). The idea here is thus for the experiential learning activities within to be designed to support specific learning objectives related to Project Management, and other relevant subject matters for the Capstone students, either directly from the activity or indirectly as a link to the lecture or resource chapter covered after the activity.

Research has clearly demonstrated that experiential learning can be critical to enhancing the overall learning process.

Rather than cover only rote-level learning objectives, students are given more time to think about the material and apply newly learned concepts to the [activity] they just experienced. Proponents of critical thought often advocate that the ability to contemplate and question ultimately leads to deeper levels of understanding. When properly designed, the ELA will emphasize the complexities in the material that are often not covered via traditional lecture or textbook readings. Our experience has been that the majority of the lecture would cover only the basic levels of knowledge (Olsen, 2006). 

Agile Project Management Game

One person is the project manager, the other is the team member.

First-round, tell the project manager that they are going to tell the team member which direction to take for each step. The goal is to get the team member to a goal location (i.e. door) but don’t make it obvious to the team member what the end goal is. See how many pairs of people make it to the door in 30 seconds.

Second round, this time, the project manager is going to start the 30 seconds by explaining to the team member that their goal is to get to the goal location, then let them walk there. See how many pairs of people make it to the door in 30 seconds.

Lesson learned: If a project manager is collaborative in providing a vision towards a goal and trusts the team to put in the effort needed (i.e. Agile sprints), they will be more effective towards that goal. The alternative is micro-management and lack of vision/empowerment, which was the first round experienced.

Source

Delegation Exercise

Ask your students to think of the most unpleasant task that they have to do in their work or school. Tell them that today they’ll have the chance to delegate it to someone else. Ask them to think about how they would explain their unpleasant tasks to someone on the team, how they would check that the task is done, and how they would encourage the person to complete the task.

Divide your students into teams of 3: delegator, task doer, observer. Share the delegation observer sheet with delegators to help check how well the delegator explains the task.  After the delegator explains the task, the task doer jots the task down, and the observer checks the points in the delegation observer sheet. Allow some time for the team to discuss the results. Change the roles in teams and repeat the task. The game has 3 rounds so that every participant tries every role.

Delegation Observer Checklist

• Did the delegator explain how important the task was?
• Did the delegator explain the purpose of the task?
• Did the delegator explain the steps on how to complete the task?
• Did the delegator review the task with the employee on its completion?
• Did the delegator encourage the employee to do the task?
• Did the employee ask any questions about the task? If not, did the employee understand how to complete the task?

Discuss the activity within your team.

• Which task is the most unpleasant in the team? What was the most challenging/easiest part of the task?
• Who is the best delegator on the team?
• Who is the ‘best doer’ in the team?
• Which part of the game was the most difficult?
• Which role was the most difficult?
• What could you do to improve the delegators/doers performance for each participant?

Source: Mike Kulakov, Everhour 

Create a Game, Game

Have students split up into groups. Each group is tasked with designing a very simple game or puzzle.

The teams will be given 1 hour of time to work together to decide upon a game, delegate tasks, determine requirements. Part of what is expected is to identify the requirements, resources, and manpower needed if the game were to be actually executed/manufactured, as well as taken to market (i.e. its fit, demographic and value).

After teammates have delegated roles and responsibilities, they are tasked to have an equal amount of time to complete their tasks individually. Whether it’s designing a prototype, testing the game, completing market research, or determining the rules of the game.

In the end, the team should come together for a final 5 minutes to put their work together and present it. The final discussion should include, where things were difficult for the team, and what they would do differently.

Key Lessons: 

• Proper planning at the beginning ensures a quality final product.
• Lack of communication when doing individual work without updating each other on progress is detrimental to success.

NASA Survival on The Moon

Instructions for Faculty:

Group members should be instructed to first rank the objects individually without communicating with team members (–10 min) and then again in their group (15 min.). In the group part of the exercise, all groups should be instructed to employ the method of group consensus, which requires each group member to agree upon the rankings for each of the 15 survival items before the item becomes a part of the group decision (Hall and Watson, 1970). Instructors should ensure that students interact only within groups and no cross-talking occurs between groups.

The students should be placing these numbers in a chart such as this:

After revealing the correct answers (below) and allowing teams to calculate their scores, record the team score and the lowest individual score from each team. Subtract the team score from the individual score; this provides the “synergy” score. Ask the students in the teams with negative synergy scores why they think their team performed as it did. Then ask the teams with positive synergy scores why they think their teams performed well. Listen for evidence of good collaboration in the teams with positive synergy.

Importance: Makes students work as a team and manage conflicting opinions to create a unified front. At the end teams are ranked on how well they did and you have a discussion about why certain teams performed better then others. You can discuss collaboration in the teams with positive synergy.

Instructions for Students: 

You are a member of a space crew originally scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. However, due to mechanical difficulties, your ship was forced to land at a spot some 200 miles from the rendezvous point. During reentry and landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged and, since survival depends on reaching the mother ship, the most critical items available must be chosen for the 200-mile trip.

Below are listed the 15 items left intact and undamaged after landing:

1. Box of matches
2. Food concentrate
3. 50 feet of nylon rope
4. Parachute silk
5. Portable heating unit
6. Two .45 calibre pistols
7. One case of dehydrated milk
8. Two 100 lb. tanks of oxygen
9. Stellar map
10. Self-inflating life raft
11. Magnetic compass
12. 20 litres of water
13. Signal flares
14. First aid kit, including injection needle
15. Solar-powered FM receiver-transmitter

Your task is to rank order them in terms of their importance for your crew in allowing them to reach the rendezvous point. Place the number 1 by the most important item, the number 2 by the second most important, and so on through number 15 for the least important.

ANSWERS

SCORING: For each item, mark the number of points that your score differs from the NASA ranking, then add up all the points. Disregard plus or minus differences. The lower the total, the better your score.

0 – 25 excellent

26 – 32 good

33 – 45 average

46 – 55 fair

56 – 70 poor — suggests use of Earth-bound logic

71 – 112 very poor – you’re one of the casualties of the space program!

Compare individual and group rankings – How many are better off? Why did more survive? What were the factors for higher group survival?

Team dynamics –  How did the group work together? Why did the group work well (or not)?  What were the group dynamics that positively contributed to a higher survival? How did you embrace the diversity of opinions?  How did you contribute to the team? What role did you assume during the game?

Source: Hall, J., & Watson, W. H. (1970). The effects of a normative intervention on group decision-making performance. NASA.

Fishbone Exercise for Problem Identification

Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, a Japanese quality control statistician, invented the fishbone diagram, also known as an Ishikawa diagram or a cause and effect diagram. When drawn, it looks like the skeleton of a fish, hence the name. It is an analytical tool often used for diagramming effects and their causes. It identifies root problems when a process is not working properly (Ishikawa, 1963).

Instructions: Draw a fish skeleton on a large piece of paper or whiteboard. Label the problem on the fish’s head. Let’s say you have problems with late deliveries. The bones protruding from the fish’s spine will each name a major category that affects the problem area. For instance, if “Materials” was one of your main categories, you brainstorm things in materials that cause late deliveries.

Key problems will likely show up in more than one category when you have completed the process. Once the most probable causes have been identified, order them from most probable to least probable.

Source: Malinda Zellman, BizFluent

The Big Picture Exercise for Team Collaboration

Source:  OrangeWorks

Instructions:

Students are divided into their groups. Each individual in a group is each responsible for painting a small segment of the groups’  Big Picture. Having no idea what the final image will be, teammates must work together to ensure that all lines meet and colours match up.

Upon completion, the final masterpiece is unveiled for the first time to the inevitable sound of thundering applause and enthusiastic cheers.

Key Learning Outcomes

Teams must adopt a ‘big picture’ approach to ensure that the final result is a success. This creative team bonding exercise requires effective colour coordination and collaboration is required for each canvas to fit perfectly. If they are unsuccessful, it can show the detriment to a final project when there is lack of team communication.

• Quick thinking and strategising
• Inspires creativity
• Developing networking skills
• Requires collaboration and communication

Square Up: Individual Time Management Exercise

Instructions:

• Print 3 pages with 24 squares that represent the 24 hours of a day.
• Share the 1st page with the participants
• Explain that each square represents one hour of a day
• Ask them to fill out the squares with their routine activities. E.g. eating 4 hours = 4 squares, sleeping 7 hours = 7 squares, etc.
• Share the 2nd page with the participants
• Ask them to fill out the squares on the second page with the non-working time they spend. E.g., coffee-breaks, talk shops, calls to mom, checking social networks, etc.
• Share the 3rd page with the participants
• Ask them to summarize the data from the 1st and 2nd pages on the 3rd page. Use different colors to tell them apart. e.g., green for the 1st page, blue for the 2nd, red for the 3rd.
• Explain that the uncolored squares = ‘productive time.’

Points to discuss:

• How could you re-evaluate your time?
• Would you change anything in your statistics?
• Are there any steps you could take to increase your productive time?
• How would you rearrange your time to have some extra time for rest?

The Sky’s The Limit

Source: Olson, J. , University of St. Thomas, Minnesota

Materials:

Time needed is roughly one hour for the completion of this activity.

• Spaghetti noodles (approximately one 4 oz. box per group)
• Miniature marshmallows
• bowls or cups for miniature marshmallows
• Tape measure or yardstick
• 50 sheets of paper secure with a binder clip
• Clock and/or timing device

This activity emphasizes the complexities involved within the project triangle and the trade-offs when crashing a project network. Demonstrates the critical elements and challenges associated with managing a project. The activity may also be used to demonstrate the construction of a work breakdown structure, project network diagram, and a Gantt chart.

The basic framework of the activity involves student teams designing, developing, and constructing skyscrapers composed entirely of spaghetti and miniature marshmallows within a specified time frame.

Learning Objectives for the Preceding Project-Management Lecture:

1. Explain the project planning cycle and the three major components of the project triangle: time, cost, and performance.
2. Explain the common project organizational structures (pure project, functional project, and matrix project) and their relationship with project management.
3. Construct and explain a work breakdown structure in project management.
4. Construct and explain a project network diagram and a Gantt chart.
5. Apply the critical path method (CPM) to analyze a project network.
6. Analyze networks with deterministic times including:
   1. Calculate the expected duration of a project;
   2. Calculate earliest start time (ES), latest start time (LS), earliest finish time (EF), and latest finish time (LF) for any activity;
   3. Calculate the critical path(s) for a project;
   4. Calculate the duration of all paths; and
   5. Calculate individual activity slack time.
7. Analyze the trade-offs between time and expediting costs by crashing a project network (i.e., the concept of “crashing”).

Instructions 

This activity is designed to be used by teams ranging from three to five students; with four students an ideal group size.

• A potential exercise variant would be to intentionally assign different-sized teams. This would provide a forum to discuss the implication of the team size on the resulting structures.