Carlos Campos

10 January 2018

OGL 320

Paper 1

My Project Management Skills

Throughout my experience with project management I have been given a

lot of opportunities to be able to express as well as develop my leadership skills in the

area of project management. I have a wide range of experience with project

management in the smallest forms from event planning all the way to construction

project management. I have gained a major interest in construction project management

after working for a construction company this past summer. I was able to shadow their

onsite project manager, and this is what sparked my interest for wanting to get into

construction project management as a career. Aside from project management I have

had experience in event planning which helped my leadership skills and ultimately will

help me with this class and my future in project management.

This past summer I received general knowledge on project management

so it was nice to be able to go into this course with some knowledge on project

management. I had heard the terms that were listed in the “Top 10 project management

terms” video, but I was not able to get into depth this past summer. This was a great

start to the lesson especially when these are terms that will be used throughout my

career. A major term that was used with this construction project was stakeholders. The
contractor I worked with was doing a project for Tesla, and the project manager had a

lot of communication problems with tesla’s representatives. In this case Tesla would

have been a stakeholder, and there should have been better representation on their

part. After Tesla’s stock dropped this summer many contractor’s walked off the site due

to not being paid in weeks. With Tesla being a very large company you would think

there would have been better communication, but this was a fault of the stakeholder.

There is a lot of areas of project management that I have come to recently

learn through this course. Like I’ve mentioned before I have general knowledge of

project management, but I did not realize the structure that came with project

management. Coming from someone who lives a very structured life this was great to

read in the lesson. I plan every aspect of my life from day to day activities to events in

the future. I see the structure of project management as a benefit to myself as I believe

that I would feel comfortable working a structured career. Although project management

is a huge part of any field of work I found this lesson very relatable to the construction

field. There is so much planning that goes into a construction project, and after going

through the first lesson it seemed very easy to relate the lesson to an actual job that I

have worked on. From making deals to planning out phases this lesson was able to

teach me how most project management jobs are the same.

This quiz was very intriguing to take because I thought I had a decent

outlook on project management, but I scored average. I scored a 57 which place my

project management skills as OK. I somewhat agree with this score. Although I am not

new to leadership and project management my knowledge of project management is

very amateur. I have never taken on a project that I could not handle, but I am nowhere

near ready to take on a large project. A lot of the leadership and planning experience I

have has come from my position with a local nonprofit.

I was a member at-large/youth representative coordinator for the Pinal

County Junior Livestock Committee. With this position I am assigned to organize and

run the county fair’s annual “championship drive” which is as it sounds the final livestock

show of the county fair in which the champions are selected. This entails me to get a

committee together to help with the organizing. I must book the facility, work closely with

the fairgrounds directors, as well as with the livestock association to make sure this

show runs as smoothly as possible. I have organized this event for 2 years, and have

been asked to organize it for a third year. So I would assume that I have did a decent

enough job to be welcomed back for another year. This event has given me a great

amount of experience in project management, and my project management skills will

only continue to grow with opportunities like this one.

One of my weaknesses when it comes to project management would be

planning for obstacles and being aware of risks. I am not someone who has back up

plans I stick to the first plan and go with it. Hopefully as this course goes on I will be

better able to see risks and obstacles before they happen and learn how to deal with

them. From the top 10 terms for project managers that use, risk mitigation would not be

my top scoring area. After looking at the slide characteristic associated with successful

project managers I would think that I have a lot of these characteristics. One

characteristic that sticks out to me and one that I believe that I possess would be “can
easily shift from big picture thinking to detail-oriented planning”. I believe that this is

something I do on a daily basis and even from the smallest planning tasks. In so many

aspects of our lives we have to plan even the smallest things, and not everything in life

is “go with the flow”. Although there are some people that seem to manage just fine with

spontaneous plans or are simply just “go with the flow” I am not able to plan even the

smallest task with that mindset.

There is a lot of benefits that come with learning about project

management, not only will this help with careers as project managers but it will help

people in everyday life. In my case this course will really benefit me since I have interest

in working with construction project management. This will give me more knowledge

about project management and everything it entails. Even if you are not working as a

project manager having knowledge about project management gives you a better

outlook on the planning process of most work industries. If you’re not a part of the

planning process you can appreciate the work that goes into this, and you are better

able to understand how much work goes into a project.

Gaining knowledge about project management will help refine my personal

skills and help get me to the position that I want to be in. In the event that I do decide to

go into the career path of construction project management having this knowledge will

help me when applying for jobs, and be able to work with other project managers. In my

case this will benefit me inside the office as well as on the job site. There is a lot to learn

when it comes to project management, and I am looking forward to the remainder of this

course.