Integrating the needs of students and non-profit organizations through project management education

Abstract

During the past several years, Xavier University, the Southwest Ohio Chapter of PMI and the United Way of Greater Cincinnati have collaborated on an innovative program to teach project management by engaging students in solving real problems for local non-profit organizations. In addition to providing a very effective learning laboratory for both graduate and undergraduate students, this program provides a much-needed service to the United Way agencies while contributing to the chapter's goal of promoting project management in the community.

The students have benefited significantly from the opportunity to plan real-world projects, and the demand for assistance always exceeds the available number of student teams. The student teams have generally benefited their respective agencies, in one case saving over $500,000 in capital spending. After six semesters, and 40 completed projects, this program is no longer an experiment, but a proven success.

It is therefore time to consider the next steps, in this case to expand the benefits beyond southwest Ohio, both by replicating the program elsewhere and establishing a cooperative network of participating schools to leverage the benefits.

The presentation will begin with a description of this program, summarizing the various roles of the faculty, the students, the local United Way organization, participating non-profit agencies, and the local chapter of PMI. The presenters will then share a number of success stories, highlighting the substantial benefits to the community as well as the educational value.

Finally, they will describe their vision for a network of such programs throughout North America, and engage the audience in determining how to make this vision a reality.

Introduction

Since 2001, Xavier University, the Southwest Ohio Chapter of PMI and the United Way of Greater Cincinnati have collaborated on an innovative program to teach project management by engaging students in solving real problems for local non-profit organizations (Kloppenborg & Baucas, 2003, 2004; Sabick, Kloppenborg & Abbott, 2002). In addition to providing a very effective learning laboratory for both graduate and undergraduate students, this program provides a much-needed service to the United Way agencies while contributing to the chapter's goal of promoting project management in the community.

After six semesters, and 40 completed projects, this program is no longer an experiment, but a proven success. It is therefore time to consider the next steps, in this case to expand the benefits beyond southwest Ohio, both by replicating the program elsewhere and establishing a cooperative network of participating schools to leverage the benefits. With the right support and energy, it is not inconceivable that such a network could significantly advance project management both as a discipline and a viable career.

Program Description

The program at Xavier University provides an opportunity for students to engage in cooperative, self-directed learning as they work on real world projects in nonprofit organizations. The experience proves particularly engaging as students work with and contribute to real organizations with needy clients, and quite challenging since students deal with greater complexity than in most written problems or cases developed for traditional project management courses.

While the course design is innovative, the learning objectives reflect those of traditional project management courses. For example, the following objectives are common to both the undergraduate and graduate courses:

1. Demonstrate an understanding of the project environment, life cycle, and selection and approval process.
2. Demonstrate an understanding of and make appropriate decisions concerning organizational structure and roles of project participants.
3. Develop and integrate scope, time and resource plans for a project.
4. Demonstrate an understanding of and make appropriate decisions concerning basic quality, communications, and risk on projects.
5. Describe issues and perform simple monitoring, and controlling functions concerning project schedule, scope, and quality.
6. Demonstrate introductory use of project management software for planning and controlling resources, and schedule.

Project selection is extremely important, obviously. While there has been considerable interest in sponsoring projects among Cincinnati area United Way agencies, a minority of projects are actually appropriate to the course's learning objectives. Therefore, projects are selected using the following criteria:

1. Involve a clearly defined problem and desired outcome.
2. Address important agency issues/challenges.
3. Allow agency representative to attend two classes.
4. Require agency project advisor to work closely with student teams.
5. Are complex and challenging, but can be completed in one semester.
6. Require planning and development, but not implementation.

The initial project proposals are submitted by individual United Way agencies using a standard template. In the early years, the instructor solicited projects by issuing an RFP through the United Way's Volunteer Resource Coordinator, but as success stories have multiplied, agencies are increasingly submitting proposals without prompting.

The projects typically involve a variety of issues and challenges and usually cross traditional project boundaries. Ideally, each class addresses a variety of projects, drawn from information systems, finance and marketing. Recent projects include:

1. Designing a fund raising campaign.
2. Developing a relocation plan for moving an agency's operations.
3. Creating a computerized accounting system to integrate billing, accounting, quality assurance, and clinical case management.
4. Merging two agencies following an acquisition.

While working on real projects creates an engaging learning environment, the students also experience the full range of complexity and ambiguity encountered outside an academic environment. Two problems are particularly acute in dealing with under funded and understaffed social service agencies: lack of clear direction and lack of organizational support. Although these problems can be mitigated somewhat through careful project selection, the students typically struggle with such “real world” problems as scope expansion and resource availability.

The students are assigned to project teams of three to five members at the beginning of the semester. While the assignment is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, occurring in the first or second week of class, the students themselves engage in the exercise as a practical example of project team activity. After explaining the program, the instructor asks the students to suggest criteria for team selection. The students typically suggest that each team have people with a mix of majors and project management experience, but who live in the same geographic area and have similar class schedules. The students are then asked to document the indicated information to allow the instructor to appropriately assign each student to a team.

The student teams are required to produce six deliverables during the semester:

1. Charter.
2. Work breakdown structure.
3. Responsibility chart.
4. Detailed schedule.
5. Communication and control plan.
6. A formal presentation summarizing the project objectives and implementation plan.

The agencies often request additional deliverables, in effect asking the students to partially implement the project. Acceding to such requests would of course shift the experience from project management to other agency work, and is beyond the class requirements. However, it is often necessary to implement an early portion of the work in order to plan the remainder, and students sometimes volunteer to partially implement the project outside the scope of the course.

In addition to providing a tangible benefit to the agency, the deliverables have two additional purposes. As course deliverables, they form the basis for grade assignment, typically constituting 40-50% of the final grade. The remaining 50-60% is based on an assessment of individual learning through traditional quizzes and exams.

The deliverables are also assessed by a team of judges, appointed by the local PMI chapter (Sabick et al., 2002). From an educational perspective, this enhances student learning by providing an opportunity for feedback from practicing project managers. The judges inevitably view the students’ work through the lens of their own recent experience, and often emphasize points not fully explored in class. But the chapter's involvement also serves a motivational purpose, in that the judges are required to select the team that best exemplifies the application of good project management practices. The winning team is recognized with a tangible reward and an invitation to present at the chapter's monthly meeting. The implied competition, and the urge to excel, is typically intense, further enhancing both the students’ learning and their contribution to the agency.

Such programs clearly require close cooperation between the faculty, the United Way, individual United Way agencies, the local PMI chapter, and the students themselves. The roles played by each of these groups are largely self-evident, but some additional comments about the instructor's role in a problem-based learning environment are appropriate. Stinson and Milter (1996) assert that the instructor must “shift from a traditional content expert role to that of coach or facilitator”, and Wilkerson (1996) describes four key instructor behaviors:

1. Balancing student direction with assistance.
2. Contributing knowledge and expertise.
3. Creating a pleasant learning environment.
4. Stimulating critical evaluation of ideas.

These behaviors are particularly important during the early phase as the students wrestle with the initial confusion, frustration, and sometimes even resistance to the new learning environment. Typically, the beginning of each class period is set aside to allow the project teams to share the problems they are facing, and engage the entire class as project consultants for each other. The instructor actively refrains from answering student questions, turning the questions back to other student teams.

The instructor also needs to help make the learning explicit, to ensure the students do not leave the course without comprehending how much they have learned (Stinson and Milter, 1996). This is normally accomplished by formally requiring the students to discuss and reflect on what they have learned during a debriefing session at the end of the semester.

Example Projects

In dealing with “real projects” the students tend to be confronted with the same issues that “real project managers” must address, and often resolve the issues in a way that provides significant benefit to the stakeholders.

Senior citizens center

For example, a senior citizens center requested assistance in developing a plan to relocate to a new and more spacious facility. The new facility, which had already been purchased, required significant renovation and the agency had already engaged an architect. Since the cost of operating the new facility was projected to be significantly higher, the agency also needed additional revenue. New services would provide part of the increase in revenue, but most of it was to be derived from government sources and that required the center to be accredited. The agency had therefore engaged a consultant to assist in the accreditation process.

The students were immediately confronted with a question of scope. Were they to develop a plan that incorporated the renovations and accreditation process as sub-projects, or focus on activities outside the domain of the architect and consultant? The agency provided little help in resolving this dilemma. Eventually, the students arranged to meet with both the architect and the consultant, and discovered an important piece of information. Although the architect and consultant were working independently, there were in fact key interdependencies in their work. In particular, the accreditation criteria included a number of facility design features, of which the architect was unaware and which would have been costly to retrofit. Simply by facilitating communication between two key stakeholders, the students saved an estimated $500,000 in construction costs.

The students eventually negotiated with the agency to define the project as “achieving accreditation”, and set about creating a work breakdown structure and project schedule. That provided the basis for their second major contribution to the agency's plans, this time in the form of bad news: the complex accreditation process would require significantly more time than the agency had allowed.

Mental health agency

A mental health agency requested assistance to deal with a sudden increase in workload occasioned by a decision to serve children, in addition to their traditional role of addressing the mental health needs of adults. The small “central connections” office was suddenly inundated with twice the historic call volume. Since there was no corresponding increase in staffing, the result was reduced service and frustrated employees.

After assessing the situation, the students developed a project plan based on 15 specific recommendations. Two years later, the agency reported that it had fully implemented 10 of the recommendations and partially implemented two of the others. The overall improvement was allowing the agency to handle the increased call volume with even less staffing.

Program Benefits

The problem-based learning approach described in this paper requires considerably more effort than teaching a typical college-level project management course. Nevertheless, there are significant benefits beyond the obvious and immediate benefit to the agency.

1. Student learning is enhanced. The students learn not just how to apply project management principles to complex problems, which can often be achieved in the controlled environment of a simulation, but how to apply those principles in the chaotic and changing environment of an understaffed social service agency.
2. The students acquire experience that is valued by prospective employers, as well as tangible products to show recruiters during the hiring process, thereby achieving an edge that can be reflected in being hired at a higher level.
3. The agencies obviously receive pro bono deliverables related to the selected projects, but they often also acquire new knowledge and skills that they can apply to future endeavors. By interacting with the students, they also learn how to develop a project charter, a work breakdown structure, and a project schedule. The student teams often train agency personnel in the use of Microsoft® Project.
4. The academic institution is afforded an opportunity to serve the community, enhancing its public image as a socially responsible organization. In many instances, the program may directly support the school's mission. The Williams School of Business at Xavier University, for example, aims to “educate students of business, enabling them to improve organizations and society”.
5. The local PMI chapter is also afforded an opportunity to serve the community, furthering its purpose of advancing the practice of project management.
6. The judges enhance their skills by working with a diverse group of project managers in a situation that requires them to discuss and evaluate the merits of a broad range of project management practices.

Vision

This approach to teaching project management could be replicated at other institutions and achieve similar benefits. But consider the possibilities if a network of institutions throughout North America collaborated synergistically.

1. The program would improve dramatically, as individual institutions experimented and then shared their learnings.
2. The local United Way organizations would also share success stories, building interest and demand for student teams, and ultimately enhancing the public's perception of project management as a profession.
3. Selected teams from different universities could compete, fostering the urge to excel.
4. A system of regional and national competitions could be established, further encouraging project teams to strive for excellence.
5. Corporate recruiters would undoubtedly flock to these competitions, as they would provide a cost-effective way to find the best of the best in project management. In turn, students would seek to participate in the program to expand their employment opportunities.
6. Recognizing the significant benefit they receive, as well as the invaluable boost to their corporate image, corporate recruiters would gladly part with large sums of money to be recognized as sponsors.

While we are many years from achieving this vision, it is not impossible. In fact, a similar model to promote free enterprise has been in place since 1975, and now operates on more than 1600 campuses in more than 40 countries (A global student organization, 2004). It could undoubtedly work to promote project management too. We just need to get started.

Next steps

There are a number of options for “getting started”. Clearly, a “network of institutions” implies that others adopt an approach similar to the program described above. Admittedly, this requires significant effort but the authors and others who participated in developing the program at Xavier University are willing to provide guidance and documents, and otherwise engage in discussions with interested institutions.

Other possibilities include:

1. Formal sponsorship by PMI or the PMI Educational Foundation, or a network of PMI chapters.
2. Formal sponsorship by a major corporation taking advantage of the opportunity to simultaneously support project management education and a national network of United Way agencies.
3. A demonstration by selected students at the PMI Global Congress – North America.

Undoubtedly, there are many others. We look forward to building on these ideas through discussion at the PMI Global Congress – North American in 2004 and subsequently.