Project Management

I gave a lecture to my intro engineering students on project management.  I’m revising the lecture a little in honor of my friend Leslie.

5 Rules for Project Management – 

Project managers plan the work, and then work the plan.  (These five rules and quotes were modified from their original format here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcR-wpSzr4Y)

(1)    Figure out what business you’re in and then mind your own business.

Our business is raising our kids, and parents of kids with special needs may be more tuned into a business model of parenting than others.  Quickly you learn that you do what the client needs, not necessarily what you *want* the client to need.  You must adapt to the marketplace, the marketplace will not adapt to you.

As to the second part of the rule, I think parents of special needs kids are better and minding their own business.  Why?  You know that every tantrum in public, outburst, or poor choice behavior is not a reflection on that child’s parent.  You realize that everyone does the best they can with the information and choices they have at the time.  Also, you’re too concerned with your own business to get too involved in someone else’s.

(2)    Document the requirements, and put them under version control.

Here’s a task – sit down and try to document the steps necessary for a child to learn to draw a house.  They need to be able to visualize a house when they aren’t looking right at it, break that mental image into recognizable shapes (squares, triangles, circles), project those shapes onto a piece of paper, communicate with the hand to get it to draw the shapes that they are mentally holding in their mind, make adjustments, and do it all without losing focus. 

Most people don’t consider these individual steps.  Why?  Because most kids simply put those pieces together by trial and error.  Special needs parents do write them down, they do keep track, and they do know the individual steps to master each new task – be it walking, writing, riding a bicycle, drawing a house.

“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try real hard, you just might find that you get what you need.”

(3)    Prepare a reasonable plan. 

“If your plan requires a miracle, then it’s not a reasonable plan.” Once you have your requirements, you set goals.  You choose (from the myriad of options) the 5-10 things you can reasonably tackle in the given timeframe.  You have to prioritize, because there are probably way more things you “could” do than you “can” do.

Like all project managers, you’re balancing costs, schedule, and client requirements.  Your insurance company may cover 20 hours of therapy, but you can reasonably only schedule 6.  Or to meet a goal you need 5 hours of occupational therapy, but you have 2 hours of physical therapy instead.  Every plan has goals, and most of the time you can accommodate at least two of the three above (cost, schedule, client requirements).   

(4)    Build a good team with clear ownership of tasks.

These are the members of the team you didn’t previously know you needed.  Primarily, they are in the medical, educational, and social science fields.  They are the:

Therapists: Their numbers vary and they tend to have a high rate of turnover.  Some are clearly more skilled than others and you have minimal say in those assigned to your team.  You deal with them most frequently, they come into your home (you quickly learn that it’s not possible to present your house as picked up all the time and they get to know the “real you” on like, day three).  If you’re lucky, you get a long string of good ones, or a good one that stays with you for a long time.

Teachers: Also, their numbers vary and there tends to be a high rate of turnover – especially in the paraprofessionals.  Teachers include the classroom teacher, special ed teacher, speech and language pathologist, physical and/or occupational therapist, and the 3-4 paraprofessionals who are assigned to the classroom to help.  Budget a little extra for gift certificates at Christmas.  Each teacher has a slightly different take on what key goals should be focused on, how those goals are being addressed, and (if you’re like me) you feel a little guilty badgering them to do specific things for your child when she’s one of 28 kids in the classroom at any given time.

Medical Professionals: these would be the “niche experts” of your team.  They can be great for going to get specific answers to questions that you have.  Typically, they are consulted and then the information they provide is used by other members of the team.  The point person (for a multitude of reasons) is the pediatrician.  Our team has at various points included a neuropsychologist, psychologist, geneticist, ophthalmologist, specialized dentist, and now an endocrinologist.

It’s a good idea to have your entire team on the same page, but working on separate things.  For example, we will all work together to improve handwriting.  The teacher is providing specialized lined paper, the speech pathologist is working one-on-one to come up with ideas of things to write about, the OT is introducing different types of pencil grips, the ophthalmologist determines that your child can see the page clearly, the home therapists are bringing needlepoint crafts, and mom is supervising piano practice.  All are working on different activities involved with improving handwriting.

(5)    Track and report project status. 

The cornerstone to any successful project is tracking.  How do you know if you have made any progress if you do not track it?  Perhaps you are trying to lose weight?  You might get a general sense that you’re successful if your clothes get looser, but if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you need a scale, and you need to stand on it.  Gulp.

Tracking accomplishments against a milestone schedule is hard.  You have a laundry list of goals and after 6 months when you can review and say “yes, we’ve met this goal” you know you’re making progress.  The goals might be goofy-sounding things like “transitions to new activity with less than 3 prompts 80% of the time.”  Your goal is to transition to new activities (“hey kids, time for dinner!”) without a fit and without you having to say it 100,000 times.  You’ve assigned someone (therapist) to record the change of every activity and the number of prompts it takes to move on.  Someone (you, therapist) has created a motivator to encourage moving to the next task without 100,000 prompts.  At some point, you sit down and decide if this goal has been met.  If yes, you decide on a new goal.  If no, you try and determine where the stumbling block is – perhaps the motivator is no good, perhaps the goal requires an unanticipated skill your child does not yet possess.  You cannot do this without collecting lots of data and setting aside time to review it.

I’m sure there are people who would read this post and “tsk-tsk” the whole idea that parenting kids is like being a project manager.  Some would say the goals and tracking and intervention interferes with the natural and organic nature of childhood.  I refer those people to Rule 1.