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| Recent rumblings about the shoestring budget, tight schedule, and other challenges facing the independently made film Atlas Shrugged Part 1 motivated me to transcribe my Facebook Note about a high school video project to this blog. I posted this message to the discussion board for my online Florida Institute of Technology Master of Business Administration (MBA) Strategic Project Management course in response to the posted question -- and thought it worth sharing here. Recall an everyday project you led or managed that did not go well. Perhaps it is a paper that you did not complete on deadline or a party you hosted and no one enjoyed. Which of the common mistakes in Section 4.7.1 did you experience? Which of the strategies to avoid these pitfalls (Section 4.7.3) might have helped your project be more successful? Refer to page 113 of the Project Management textbook (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008). I initially wanted to discuss any of several NASA projects but then I decided to have a little more fun with this question by looking back decades to my high school days. I attended a state boarding school in grades 11 and 12 for technically gifted students called the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM) 1982-84. It was the first of its kind and inspired other states in the coming years to create similar schools. The school offered a rigorous curriculum in science and mathematics as well as humanities and other academic courses. In addition to a standard academic year of four quarters, the school also had a "Special Projects Week" (SPW) – now called "Mini-Term" (NCSSM, 2010) – in March of every year to allow students the independence and freedom to explore subjects of interest in much greater depth. Since grade 10, I have had an intense interest in a British Broadcasting Company (BBC) fantasy series called "Doctor Who" (BBC, 2010). The show started in 1963 and was still going strong at the time I attended NCSSM. So I teamed with a junior fellow fan of the series, George Burton, and we proposed a video project that would bring our own fan version of the show to the campus. "The Invasion of NCSSM" we called it. We brainstormed a story the fall of that year and managed to get the media center director, Jim Henry, to buy into it on the condition that we alter the characters to make them our own. He outlined what he expected us to do to make the project a success: Have you ever fallen so totally in love with a vision that you lose sight of everything else? That is exactly what happened to me and to a lesser extent to George. We both got so excited about making this project happen that, at least for me, the "main thing" – academic achievement – started to slip. When we completed our "monster script" over Thanksgiving break and handed it to our advisor upon our return, he felt overwhelmed by its size and anticipated length of 45 minutes. "It's time for some simplification," he warned. But after we deluded ourselves into believing we could make the project happen, we managed to snow him into the delusion with us. As he challenged us to address potential pitfalls, such as the leaky roof in the utility building, we managed to dodge every bullet with responses that sounded convincing. "If it rains, we will just record other scenes elsewhere," we explained. My first clue about the true scope of this project came when I started drawing the storyboard in January and February. I spent numerous late nights after completing homework in chemistry, calculus, physics, biology, and English drawing stick figures to correspond to the script. March came, and so did SPW, and the storyboard was perhaps only halfway done. We would have to "wing it" for the rest of the camera shots. Meanwhile, we were also facing other issues such as completing the alien costumes and the set for the time machine. We had expected to finish these prior to SPW but numerous weekends prior to that time still did not make that happen. We had to recruit our actors to become stage hands just to finish cleaning, nailing, and painting. We could have really used Microsoft Project in those days! To complicate matters further, the BQ camera did not arrive in time to start recording with it. So we had to record early footage on a mediocre video camera with lower color quality. That made no one happy but it was a genuine resource schedule limit that impacted the final quality of the product. By the middle of SPW, I was a total wreck. I felt like a train had run me down and then backed over me for good measure. "My dream has turned into a nightmare!" I moaned. I was not much fun that week. George was no happier. The bottom line was that we only completed about half our principal footage that week. Rain did fall that week and allowed very little recording time on our leaky main set. We had to sneak the remaining recording into snatches of free time here and there on weekends. "How are your classes doing, Luke?" our advisor pressed. "Good enough," I answered defensively, meaning that I passed with mediocre grades. Even if we had completed the footage that week, it would actually not have helped our schedule since the BQ editor arrived weeks later than planned. When it finally did arrive, we had to turn the editing studio into a war room to finish the product. At one point, we literally stopped the editor, quickly assembled some actors in the hallway outside, recorded a key scene involving an alien murder of a random student, and then dashed back into the studio to insert the scene. Concurrent with all this lunacy, I was taking a course in electronic music even though I have not one jot of musical ability. I had registered for the course for the specific purpose of accessing the music lab and its awesome equipment. George and I managed to find the right combination of tape tracks and speeds to create adequately menacing robotic voices for our aliens. We recorded the dialogue and then dashed down the hall to the editing studio to dub it onto the visual edit. We also used a standard vinyl record of sound effects to add those as well. Finally, my large collection of movie soundtrack albums provided a rich collection of orchestral music to give the movie a feel of an actual, professional production. The final product premiered literally two days prior to graduation. We were sweating bullets. Thankfully, it did receive very warm reviews from a large and potentially hostile audience of fellow NCSSM students. We also finally got credit for our "Special Projects Week" project which at this point had become a "Special Projects Year" project. While I do not regret making this effort, I would definitely have heeded our mentor's advice to reduce the scope of this project! A much simpler story of ten minutes would have more than satisfied the SPW requirements. So now let me answer the question initially asked. I read the cited text in Section 4.7.1, "Anticipating Common Mistakes" (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton, 2008). But I cannot locate a common mistake of "underestimating project scope." Looking into Section 4.7.2, "Responding to Reality" (Portny et al., 2008), "Project managers often learn by doing," and "Sometimes, things change," seem to resonate most with our project predicaments. In addition, Section 4.7.3, "Detecting Potential Pitfalls Early" (Portny et al., 2008), "Incomplete and inaccurate schedules and resource needs," and "Not anticipating and planning for risks and uncertainties," also resonate with our issues. I have included in the "References" section of this report links to YouTube videos of our advisor's opening remarks when he presented it on local cable access that summer as well as the video itself. I still have fond memories of that project. But I also have lessons learned to share. I have included these as my "Dual Enrollment versus NCSSM" and "Slash $24,000 and Two Years from College at NCSSM" video links. Finally, I have included a link to the current NCSSM Mini-Term Web site. As an interesting aside, David Epley, who played the "Spy" character from the video, has parlayed his skills at science and acting to become "Doktor Kaboom!" (Epley, 2010). I want to close this report with a note of caution to parents of ambitious children. In today's market, what matters most are not creative experiences such as the one I just described, but credits on college transcripts leading to a degree in one's career of choice. This sounds harsh but it is true. If I did my education today, I would attend an early college high school -- essentially attending high school at a local community college -- rather than attend NCSSM. This option only recently materialized but it definitely has more tangible benefits than NCSSM even if it has less "fun." The latter cannot usually be spun into gold whereas the former can be. Watch my aforementioned "Dual Enrollment versus NCSSM" video for the full story. References: British Broadcasting Company (2010). "Doctor Who." http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw Epley, David (2010). "Doktor Kaboom!" http://www.doktorkaboom.com/ Henry, Jim (1984). "NCSSM Presents 'The Invasion of NCSSM.'" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFKN5sTzdCA The North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (2010). "Min-Term: Experience NCSSM." http://www.ncssm.edu/mini-term Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., & Sutton, M. M. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons. Setzer, Luther (2008). "Dual Enrollment versus NCSSM." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWgDo2BlOJI Setzer, Luther (2009). "Slash $24,000 and Two Years from College at NCSSM." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ7KwFjIWGo Setzer, Luther (1984). "The Invasion of NCSSM." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsVjX7FoBl8 | ||||
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