GM593 Unit 6 Status Reporting Seminar Reflection Example

Recovered or Pretended: A Unit 6 Seminar Reflection on Why Status Goes Wrong

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GM593: Project Execution With Monitoring and Control

Unit 6 Seminar Reflection

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The classmates' projects and the writer's university relocation are composite; the research cited is real.

Two Cases

Marisol manages projects for a regional airport. Its new baggage handling system was due to open with a terminal expansion. In month four, testing showed the sorting software misrouted bags at peak loads. The project manager reported the status as red, explained the problem to the airlines, and asked them to accept a new opening date six weeks later. The system opened on that second date, six weeks late but exactly when promised the second time. The airlines, Marisol said, trusted the project more afterward than before.

Derrick works for a school district that bought new bus routing software. For eleven consecutive status reports, the implementation was green. On the first morning of the school year, 30 routes had no driver assigned, because the software had not imported the drivers' availability correctly, and several hundred children waited at stops. The district's transportation director had seen warning signs in test runs and reported them as minor.

My First Reading

I came to the session believing the difference between these projects was the honesty of the people running them. The airport's project manager told the truth; the district's director did not. I said so when it was my turn, and several classmates agreed.

What the Session Did With It

The instructor asked us to separate two explanations that Bent Flyvbjerg and his colleagues distinguish in their study of public works projects (Flyvbjerg et al., 2002). Optimism bias is an honest error: people sincerely believe their plans will work and underweight the chance of trouble. Strategic misrepresentation is a deliberate distortion, usually because the incentives reward a good-looking report. Flyvbjerg later argued that the two call for different remedies: optimism bias is corrected by better forecasting methods, while strategic misrepresentation is corrected by changing accountability and incentives (Flyvbjerg, 2006).

So which was the district? Derrick explained that the transportation director's annual review counted on-time implementation, and that the district's superintendent had told the school board in the spring that the new system would end route complaints. A red status in August would have meant contradicting the superintendent in public. Whether the director believed the problems were minor, or wanted them to be, the design made green the only comfortable color.

The airport's project manager, by contrast, worked under a contract with the airlines that required notice of any delay over two weeks, with penalties for late notice but not for the delay itself if notice was given. The design rewarded the early red.

The airport's manager was not braver than the district's director; she worked inside a contract that paid for early bad news and penalized hiding it.

Where My View Changed

I still think honesty matters. Someone has to write red when red is true. But the session persuaded me that most of the difference between a project that recovers and one that pretends lies in what the reporting system rewards and what it measures. H. Jeff Smith and Mark Keil found that people on troubled projects stay silent when they expect bad news to be blamed on them or ignored (Smith & Keil, 2003). Change the expectation, and the silence changes. That is a more useful conclusion than mine, because a project manager can change a contract clause, a review criterion or a reporting template, but cannot easily make people braver. Design is something I can actually work on.

Turning It on the Relocation

The Hollis Hall relocation has its own example. In month three the movers reported 7,400 items packed, while the relocation database showed 6,120 scanned. My first reaction was that the movers were exaggerating. After the session, I looked at their contract. It pays per item packed, invoiced monthly, with no reference to manifests or scans. The movers reported the number their contract paid for. That is not dishonesty; it is design.

I will propose two changes to the steering group. First, the movers' invoice should be based on items scanned, which is the measure the project actually uses. Second, our weekly report should carry a standing line for items packed but not scanned, so the gap between the two counts is visible every week instead of being discovered.

I also want to apply the airport's lesson to ourselves. Our own project's incentive is to show the chair a report that keeps the demolition date safe. The department's credibility with the university depends on that date. If the EHS backlog keeps growing, I should be the airport's project manager, reporting red early and asking for a decision while there is still time, rather than the district's director, hoping the problem will be minor.

References

Flyvbjerg, B. (2006). From Nobel Prize to project management: Getting risks right. Project Management Journal, 37(3), 5-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/875697280603700302

Flyvbjerg, B., Holm, M. S., & Buhl, S. (2002). Underestimating costs in public works projects: Error or lie? Journal of the American Planning Association, 68(3), 279-295. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944360208976273

Smith, H. J., & Keil, M. (2003). The reluctance to report bad news on troubled software projects: A theoretical model. Information Systems Journal, 13(1), 69-95. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2575.2003.00139.x