Lingos Staff Meeting Minutes

NGO Project Management Initiative

Staff Meeting

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 – 4:00 PM (EDT)

Participants

AGENDA

1. Check in with Kay, Caren, and Deborah on progress to date
2. Help Wanda identify a curriculum section to work on
3. Set up individual phone calls with staff to discuss individual pieces

SUMMARY

A great deal of progress has been made on the development of the pilot curriculum. Of the 9 two-hour sections, initiation and assessment/analysis/log-frames are pretty much complete. Kay developed a preliminary slide deck for WBS and Deborah provided a slide deck on scheduling. Trista is working on Budgeting/Estimating section.

CARE provided the most complete example of a Detailed Implementation Plan we’ll be able to find. Kay says the DIP provided is more like a very detailed statement of work. It does not get us to a WBS because, among other things, it doesn’t break out the project into categories. (Kay, I hope I captured this correctly.) This issue is still a challenge for us because most people in the NGO world do not use a WBS and don’t know the terminology. They very rarely use MS Project and if they do, probably aren’t using it correctly.

One of the big pieces still missing from the curriculum is 4 hours of content for the implementation section. Two of these hours will likely be highly contextualized content on monitoring and evaluation issues, an area with a huge body of knowledge in the NGO world. Mike would like the other two hours to cover some of the 9 PMBOK subject areas that are not being covered in the curriculum. Suggestions include procurement (purchasing, managing contracts, consultants, etc.) and HR issues (creating teams, supporting and managing teams). Caren also suggested that reporting/communications are very important. One of the WG members also suggested that donor compliance and project reporting be included in the curriculum. Perhaps this can be fit within a section on reporting/communications.

We are at the point where Mike would like to speak with each staff member individually regarding the content of their slide decks.

ACTION

1. Kay will use the case information provided by Mike to attempt to develop a WBS for the case. She will get back to Mike and Leslie if more context is needed.
2. Mike is working through Caren’s slide deck. Caren will send Mike by e-mail some times when they could speak over the next several days.
3. Mike has not yet seen Deborah’s work on scheduling. Deborah will send Mike some times by e-mail that would work. Mike suggested Thursday or Friday to give him a chance to review his work.
4. The assignment makes sense to Wanda and she will get started. Mike will send Wanda a more detailed e-mail within the next 24 hours with some direction. The e-mail will include some sample communication plans.

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Next Meeting: August 21, 7:00 EDT