28 Jan What variances can you

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 1 Discussion

CGE Project Introduction

This course will focus on approaching your CGE project topic from a project management perspective. We will spend a majority of this course laying the critical planning foundation. Feedback from your colleagues and peers should be a routine practice when it comes to projects. For this discussion, please address the following.

State your PICOT either as a post or an attachment to the Week 1 PICOT worksheet.

Provide a brief overview of your project and how you came to choose this project.

Read through the posts of your classmates and provide constructive feedback. Ask any questions you may have about a classmate’s topic or share any experience you have in that area. Remember to always be respectful and encouraging when it comes to providing feedback.

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 2 Discussion

Important Aspects of Project Management

Reflect on projects that you have been involved in during your career or in everyday life. We have all been involved in projects such as buying a house, renting an apartment, remodeling, and so on. You may also have participated in projects at work, such as workload assessments, initiating an electronic health record, or even pursuing a major capital project such as building a new unit or facility.

What do you feel is the most important aspect of project management to ensure a successful project? Provide a rationale for your answer.

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 3 Discussion

Change theory in project management

Read the Mitchell (2013) article listed in the required reading list. Leading change is an important part of successful project execution and implementation. The nurse leader and project manager should be intimately familiar with a particular change theory that serves as the framework for leading the change represented by a project. Identify your “go-to” change leadership framework and discuss how you will use that framework to guide organizational change.

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 4 Discussion

Communication in Project Management

Reflect on the many stakeholders who must be kept informed about your project to ensure its timely implementation and ultimate success. Also reflect on the types of recipients of communication for your project. Traditional means of communication and disseminating information have been meetings, conference calls, and e-mail. We are in the midst of a communication revolution where social media in the form of Twitter, Instagram, instant messaging, texting, Facebook, and so on are prevalent. Discuss what you feel will be some of the most important communication tools you can use for your project. What are the pros, cons, and potential barriers? Are there cultural or other diversity issues that should be considered in your choice of communication? I look forward to a great discussion on this topic this week!

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 5 Discussion

Resource Management in Project Management

As a project manager, part of your responsibility will be identifying resources that you have available and those resources that you may need in addition to what is currently available. Once you know what physical and human resources you have at your disposal, you then use the PM tools introduced in the lesson to allocate and schedule them. In thinking about your project, what resources might you anticipate being the most concerning to secure and/or manage? I look forward to your thoughts and to interacting with some of you this week!

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 6 Discussion

Planning and Scheduling

Assume you were appointed as project manager to lead a dozen of your classmates to write up an end-of-course summary guide that would be used to update all areas of the course (i.e., discussion questions, lectures, assignments, quizzes, and exams). You get to meet face to face periodically, but the majority of the work is done via conference call and e-mail. You plan to form subteams to work on each of these elements, each headed by a subteam leader. How would you set up your WBS? What are some of the considerations you made when you decided on this structure? Read a number of your classmates’ ideas and look for similarities and differences. Ask questions about why a person set up his or her plan as he or she did. Would you change anything about your plan after networking with others?

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 7 Discussion

Controlling Risks and Project Budgets

You’ll recall that as part of developing your project charter (Week 2), you submitted a preliminary budget. This week’s lesson went into much greater depth on the financial aspects of a project. This is a good time to look at your preliminary budget, consider what was presented in this week’s lesson, and reflect back on other financial concepts and tools you learned throughout the nurse executive track. Use the following questions as the basis for your discussion this week.

What variances can you identify on your project to date? If you had to report on the reason for variances +/- 10% of budget, what would your report say?

Think back to lessons and discussions on forecasting. What adjustments do you feel you need to make to your project budget based on your progress to date and what you foresee moving forward? What changed to cause you to have to adjust (forecast) the project budget?

NR631 Nurse Executive Concluding Graduate Experience I

Week 8 Discussion

Wrapping up CGE Part I

At the end of each discussion, you are asked to provide a summary of your learning for the week. This reflective summary should focus on one or two key takeaway points that you feel are valuable to you as a rising executive leader. Take some time to review your discussion summaries and choose one or two of the biggest “Aha!” moments of the course, then tell us about them and why they are important in your development as an executive leader.