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I'm a college professor in a bit of a unique situation (just like everyone else :)).

I teach/administer an engineering design course, and the project and people management has been really killing us for a while now (I took over the course this last year). Thus I stared listening to MT. It's also been illuminating to my Cub Scouting life, where I'm a Cubmaster.

I meet with the students to cover new content (i.e. "engineering design"), and set the specs for all the deliverables - presentations, schedules, budget reports, design plans, etc. Each group of 4-5 students has a "faculty advisor" who meets with them anywhere beween weekly and never. Depending of the advisor, they get very good or not-so-good help with non-technical parts of their project. Most groups appoint a "team lead" from among the students on a rotating basis, to give everyone a bit of experience at it.

I was wondering if anyone had advise on the use of the Trilogy in this situation: we've got a bit of the two-boss syndrome (is that a technical term?), the rotating team leads, and the fact that we're in a one-year project then they're off. I've got no authority over the advisors, so it's not really a hierarchical situation.

I'm considering utilizing o3s between myself and the team leads, though not so much on the "10 for development" since I won't be seeing them long-term. But I feel that the increased communication should help avoid the dramatic failures at least... The feedback model seems appropriate, if not as useful as o3s, and the coaching model doesn't seem appropriate to the situation.

bflynn's picture

I think you're on a good track. Remember that o3s are meant to facilitate communications and relationship building. It is the better communications and better relationship that makes for better management.

I would actually advise on keeping some coaching in your model. Yes, you only have these students a short time, but you can still help them by making suggestions on outside things. Part of these value of these engineering courses is also learning things like project managements, which few (undergraduates at least) have ever heard of.

Brian

knickels's picture

[quote="bflynn"]
I would actually advise on keeping some coaching in your model. Yes, you only have these students a short time, but you can still help them by making suggestions on outside things. Part of these value of these engineering courses is also learning things like project managements, which few (undergraduates at least) have ever heard of.
Brian[/quote]

Thanks for the advise. How would I do coaching when I only see a team leader 2-3 times before they rotate off, though? I'd have to identify areas of improvement in the first o3...

Probably students are no different from other individual contributors when they gripe about the time spent "doing project management" vs "actually working on the project". Any suggestions on low-key resources for PM? I've looked into PMBOK, but it's just so overwhelming. "Just enough Project Management" seems close.