10 Lessons Learned | MBA Teaching

At the end of February 2022, I received an offer I had been dreaming three years. Aldis Greitāns, the Director of the Riga Business School (RBS) MBA programs, reached out to me and offered to lead the Information Technology (IT) Project Management course during the Summer 2022 semester. It was not a tough decision, but I was a little bit worried if two months would be enough to mobilize.

Introduction

Without halting my primary job as a Solution Architect at Accenture Baltics, starting from March, I was busily spending evenings and weekends preparing for the course. I was working on the course structure, writing the syllabus, and selecting the reading materials.

In this article, I have described the approach to the course structure and shared my lessons learned based on the student's feedback.

Course Preparation

The plan was to put maximum effort into the preparation. I have assumed that the better I would prepare, the less time I would spend during the semester. Either this was a wrong assumption, or Parkinson's law worked, but 100 hours of preparation was just the beginning of this long and challenging story.

Slides

Initially, I planned to reduce the preparation efforts was to start using the slides that accompanied the book. However, while preparing for my first ever class, I understood that I did not enjoy presenting slides that other people had created. To get used to the class materials, I redesigned and changed the slides, rereading the book in parallel. This also helped to prepare the story for the class.

Textbook

I have scanned the top 10 Project Management books for the MBA programs across the globe and shortlisted three books:

• Information Technology Project Management 9th Edition by Kathy Schwalbe (Cengage 9781337101356 2018)
• Project Management: A Systems Approach to Planning, Scheduling, and Controlling, 13E by Harold Kerzner (Wiley 9781119805380 2022)
• Project Management: A Managerial Approach, 11th Edition by Meredith, Shafer, Mantel (Wiley 9781119803812 2021)

While selecting the book, I kept in mind two constraints. First, my course was tagged as an Information Technology elective course. The second constraint was that the course would be fast-paced (7 weeks long). The book by Harold Kerzner is a recognized standard, but 800+ pages for seven weeks seemed overwhelming. "Project Management: A Managerial Approach" would be a good choice for General Project Management, as many cases and examples are described across different industries. Yet, I was lucky to have an option fitting the School's expectations and my experience. I have chosen the textbook by Kathy Schwalbe. The only problem I have identified with the textbook selected is that the 9th edition is based on the previous version of the PMI PMP standard (version 6). Considering that the newer 7th version of the standard is less than one year old, I have decided to ignore this issue for now.

Articles

From my studies at Riga Business School, I remember Harvard Business Review (HBR) as the best source of business articles. I aimed to bring recent ideas and concepts around the Project management field to the class by using articles. I have spent a few weeks browsing the HBR by IT Project management-related terms like Agile, Risks, Stakeholders... In some cases, I have used additional resources. Below is the list of articles that I have selected for the Information Technology Project Management course:

• Is Project Management the Right Career for You?
• The 4 Types of Project Manager
• The Project Economy Has Arrived
• 6 Questions to Ask Before Starting a Big Project
• Embracing Agile
• Why Agile Goes Awry - and How to Fix It
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Business Analysts
• 10 Tactics to Keep Your Meeting on Track
• Five Questions to Identify Key Stakeholders
• The Endless Digital Workday
• Stop Doing Your Team's Work for Them
• In Uncertain Times, Big Companies Need to Take Care of Their Suppliers
• Keeping Work Organized when Your Team Is Fragmented
• Every Manager Is a Risk Manager
• How to fail in project management (without really trying)
• The Hard Side of Change Management

Assignment #1 - Discussion Board

While studying at the University at Buffalo, I have found a new assignment format that I have not seen before. The idea is that in the web forum format, students create posts for the selected topics, and then as a second contribution, students respond to the previous posts. The challenge for me was to define engaging and actual topics for the discussion. I had used the articles described before for inspiration but tried to push students to think in Latvian IT market realities and share their experiences.

Some of the topics for the Discussion board involved:

• The right balance of documentation in the project
• Comparison of the project and operational activities
• Agile way
• COVID-19 and a "new normal"
• Task delegation in Project Management
• Benefits and challenges of Information Technology Outsourcing
• Reducing the impact and probability of Project risks

Assignment #2 - Quizzes

Somewhat a standard assignment type for the MBA course. Among students, opinion about quizzes varies, from useless to very useful, and I understand both points of view. Before I find a better alternative, I see two significant benefits of quizzes:

1. It pushes students to read the textbook by the specific deadline
2. As a professor, I can see how well students understand the previously covered basic concepts and if I need to repeat the topic.

Considering the average quiz results above 90%, I think that understanding was at a reasonable level for my class.

Meanwhile, preparation was not an easy task for me. For the five weeks, weekly, I took 150+ questions quizzes to filter out the questions that, in my opinion, were trying to catch the students, not to test their basic knowledge.

Assignment #3 - Case Studies

Another standard MBA assignment type that many students enjoy is Case studies. RBS has at least three other IT concentration classes, so finding new IT, specifically Project management-related Case studies, was challenging. But I was able to select four of them.

Unfortunately, one case heavily failed. Firstly, there were some unclarities inside the case text. Secondly, I have made mistakes while defining the questions and supplementary materials.

Despite some problems, I was impressed by the active discussions and the number of questions students raised during the case discussions. I probably need to consider more cases for the next course.

Assignment #4 - Special Topics

Special topics presentation was also a relatively innovative idea that I have gathered while learning in the USA. The idea is to motivate Master's level students to conduct their research on the topic that is not covered in the standard course materials. The full-scale assignment would include at least one hour workshop led by the selected students' team, a five to ten-page individual research report with references to the academic sources, and a video introduction of the topic. Considering the overall course load, I have limited the deliverable to the in-class 15 minutes presentation and received mixed feedback on the assignment value. So the next time, I must choose a different format for the Special topic assignment to increase its value.

Below are the topics selected for the Special topic presentations:

1. Product Discovery
2. DevOps Mindset
3. Extreme Programming
4. Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
5. Project Premortem
6. Sustainability in Project Management

Assignment #5 - Team Project

I have split the apex of the course, the Team project, into two parts. The first part Study project focused on the project execution process activities. It consisted of students' team forming, project topic selection, work split between the team members, task planning, and weekly handover of deliverables and progress reports to me. The second part I have called a Business project. Students had an opportunity to either ground their work on the actual company or develop the project around the imaginary business case. At the end of the course, some students reflected that the real-life examples were engaging, but real sponsor involvement helped to focus and shape the project's business aspects. As a part of the Business project, students have developed such deliverables:

• Business case
• Project charter
• Project canvas
• Scope statement
• Personas
• User stories
• Work breakdown structure (WBS)
• Stakeholder register
• Communication plan
• Activity list
• Gantt chart
• Critical path
• Project organization chart
• RACI chart
• Cost estimate
• Budget
• Request for Proposal (RFP)
• Risk register

I have divided the deliverables into five phases. Over the six weeks, students in teams worked on each phase, gradually creating and improving their unique project story. Below is the list of topics that students have come up with:

1. Redesign of the famous financial literacy web portal
2. Project management process digitalization for the logistics company
3. BI system implementation in the construction company
4. Task management SaaS application development
5. Automation solution implementation for the insurance policy production
6. eCommerce platform development for buying and selling garden plants

Team Project Sub-task: Peer Reviews

Every Sunday, students were expected to hand over the project deliverables. I wanted to give a chance to improve the quality of the deliverables and try to limit inattention mistakes by introducing the peer-review process. Before submitting deliverables to me, students were first uploading deliverables for review by other students. However, considering the fast pace course and the total number of assignments, I have agreed with the students' suggestion to remove this activity. I see peer reviews as an essential and valuable task and will keep them for the standard pace course.

Team Project Sub-task: Phase Reports

The mandatory part of every phase deliverables was a phase progress report. Students were required to list the deliverables, share the split of the team members' responsibilities, describe operational issues, and share the best practices and lessons learned from the phase. Some students saw this as a burden, but from my point of view, the prepared materials supported the learning objectives and stimulated students to reflect and improve for the upcoming phases. I must review the Phase report template and remove unimportant parts to enhance the students' experience.

Team Project Sub-task: Final Presentations

The culmination of the Team project happened on 16 June 2022, when each team presented their projects. A jury of industry experts provided critical feedback, and the Chairman announced the best projects for the Summer 2022 course.

I want to thank all the Jury Members that dedicated their time and efforts to participate in the final presentations.

Jury Board

• Andris Aišpurs - Agile Coach @ tet.lv
• Eduards Bezprozvanovs - Chief Technology Officer @ elkogroup.com
• Jānis Brazovskis - Board Member @ financelatvia.eu
• Nora Freimane - Lean Management Consultant @ bizef.lv
• Pēteris Bodnieks - Chief Technology Officer @ sell.xyz

Assignment #6 - Extra Credit Assignment

I believe the professor must allow students to make up for the lost points. Considering that not all students will have the experience to share, I have offered two options for earning extra credit:

1. By presenting their experience relevant to the IT Project Management field;
2. Write a short memo on the approach and materials covered during the past week.

Only three students were ready to present their experiences. But that contributed a lot to retaining the course schedule. For the memo, initially, students were not applying because they did not understand the task. After clarifying the expectations, I have received more applications. Nevertheless, I will need to improve the assignment and increase the opportunities for all the students to earn extra points.

Guest Lectures

In my understanding, the essential part of all MBA Courses is Guests from the Industry. I have asked students to invite their preferred speakers but received very few recommendations. Luckily I had my list of experts that I associated with different IT Project Management knowledge areas.

Dear Guests, I appreciate your time and efforts being part of the Information Technology Project Management MBA course, Summer 2022!

• Andris Aišpurs - "Agile Fundamentals"
• Ivars Auziņš - "Fragments of Experience"
• Jurijs Salijevs - "How to Fix a Broken Project"
• Maija Kuisma - "Procurement in IT"
• Nora Freimane - "Lean Approach"
• Pēteris Bodnieks - "Gorilla Methodology"
• Sergei Avanessov - "Role of a Leader"
• Toms Veilands - "Lessons Learned"
• Valērija Makijenko - "Survival kit: Working with the Scope"

Course Statistics

• Number of students: 30
• Discussion board contents (in A4-pages equivalent): 200+ pages
• Quiz questions taken: 2,800+
• Average time spent per student per week: 20 hours
• Indicative total efforts for all participants: 4,600+ hours

Feedback and Lessons Learned

1. Previous Experience

Students with different levels of experience and exposure to the IT concepts applied to the class. Undoubtedly, experienced students went through a more smooth journey than those who first saw and heard about IT and Project Management content. There must be a better approach to how I can help those with limited experience. One of the ideas could be to stimulate learning and knowledge sharing inside the teams. I can form teams for the students and try to bind students with diverse backgrounds. This time I have allowed students to create the teams. I do not have a good solution now, and I would appreciate your ideas.

2. Usage of Software

When I put together the course syllabus, I understood that, unfortunately, there would not be enough time to learn the project management software tools (example: MS Project). However, after going through the deliverables and considering the iterative approach of deliverables development, I believe that if students would use the tools for Activity list, Gantt chart, Critical path, Cost estimate, and Budge. That might reduce the efforts required for the documentation updates and improve the overall course experience. So for the next course, I will need to find a way to introduce available options and help students choose the right software tools for their Team projects.

3. More Examples

Find a better balance between theory and real-life examples. This was my first teaching experience, and I had limited time to improvise with the course structure. I have decided to structure the course around the book chapters based on the recognized PMI PMP standard. The benefits of this approach were that I had a clear roadmap and boundaries, but at the same time, this limited my own story. Students claimed I shared very few examples, as they had expected more practical examples. I sometimes tried to improvise and share the examples, but the best approach would be to prepare all the stories (cases) ahead of class. So to-do activity will be to seek and list the examples from my personal experience that fit the theoretical concepts discussed in the class. Meanwhile, I must also consider confidentiality and abstract the stories.

4. "7-week" Course

The standard pace MBA course is 14 weeks long. At RBS summer semester starts in May and finishes in August. To also have some summer time, I have decided to pick a fast-paced course that lasts seven weeks but has two weekly meetings. I must admit that I have minimally adjusted (reduced) the load and still considered this course a standard MBA course from the efforts perspective. This resulted in a doubled load on me for the preparations each week. And a double load on the students to do their homework. Without trying the same course structure over the 14 weeks of a long semester, it is hard now to make any comparisons and conclusions, but considering the students' feedback, next time, it is worth trying to have a standard pace course.

5. Constant Pressure

Another point worth considering is the approach to the assignment due dates. The standard practice is one due date for all the weekly assignments. However, at the University at Buffalo, I have noticed that some Professors spread the due dates across the week. Probably I liked the approach because at Buffalo, I had no primary job, and all my weekly capacity (~100 hours) went exclusively to the School. Additionally, if not done gradually over the week, I believe the assignment might clash one day, as people tend to postpone the execution until the very last moment. At the same time, I also understand the students' concerns. Sometimes it is hard to follow multiple due dates, as course tasks require more focus and conflict with personal life and primary professional duties. There are pros and cons, but I believe managing the assignment's due dates for the standard-pace course will be easier. But at the same time, real projects have conflicting priorities and challenging due dates. Hopefully, my approach to the course allowed students new to the field to sense the environment surrounding projects.

6. Stories over Theories

In the future, I need to find the right solution, how to move from a theoretical pitch toward interactive and active learning. Lectures can be based more on discussing real-life examples, increasing interactivity, and bringing new perspectives on the theoretical materials covered by the pre-read assignments. One of the good examples that I can take away from IT Project Management 2022 is how students were engaged in the case study discussions, and the task for me would be to extend this interest to more topics and ideally to every class. 

7. Workshops

The intensity of the course and busy agenda took all the capacity of the course, and unfortunately, I could not provide students a lot of opportunities to practice Project management concepts during our meetings. I will probably need to challenge the concept of the course and move from voicing over the theory to allowing students to do workshops during the class. Workshops can be arranged around the draft project deliverables, enriched with the immediate professor's feedback.

8. Absolute Final

I have decided to start slowly and set the deadline for the project's first phase at the end of week 3. This decision resulted in the postponed submission of the final deliverables to the end of week seven, which happened to be after the final presentations. In the future, I will need to check if it makes sense to start the Team project earlier and have it finished before the final presentations. And to have our Final presentations as the official end of the course.

9. Guest Speakers

While not heavily loaded with the course assignments, students were asking Guest speakers many questions. Unfortunately, the number of questions reduced when the load significantly increased. I believe that feedback and questions to the guest speakers contribute to the learning process, as well that is how we can pay back to our guests and help them learn and improve. Next time I will need to find the mechanism to motivate students more to provide feedback and ask questions.

10. Time Value

Some students highlighted that I spent too much time on obvious things. For example, a detailed walkthrough of the assignment description was identified as one problematic area. This is not the shared perception, as I also did a quick survey at the beginning of the course. But if some students think so, there must be a better way to balance the proper level of explanation and not spend precious time.

Summary

I agree with the students that the course was intense but engaging. Students selecting the quick-pace summer semester course were not expecting to dedicate so much time, and I underestimated the efforts associated with the weekly preparation.

Nevertheless, I believe the environment I created during this semester closely replicated the challenges and atmosphere of real projects. Also, I must admit that level of dedication, engagement, and quality of the deliverables sometimes surpassed those I have seen in real projects. Big THANKS to all the participants, and I hope that after completing the course, you will take your time to recharge and reevaluate what has just happened. I will continue working through the lessons learned and preparing for the next improved version of the course.

Dear Students,

I will be happy to discuss any questions you might have about the Information Technology industry at any time. In my experience, such challenging projects as we had together over the last seven weeks are notable life events that build strong connections among the participants.

Let's keep in touch.

Thank you for this Journey!

--- Konsta Osh