Learning from a Project Post Mortem: Where is the meat and cheese?

 

The culmination of life events (for a teenager) is the celebration at the end of the curricular road; The Graduation Party.  I began planning the party and creating a potential budget the summer before my son’s senior year. In my mind, where it was all assembled and were it stayed, the plan appeared to be moving forward.  My son wanted ‘walking tacos’ and pumpkin pie (well it was his party so he got to choose). And so the menu was solidified, besides the items I added such as cupcakes, nachos, etc.

In principle, I have had enough dinner parties and birthday parties to be conscious of the important essentials of creating a smooth and fun atmosphere. I did my due diligence by researching how much meat each walking taco would require (times) how many people were expected.  In fact, I researched almost every aspect of food and drink that would be required in making sure all guests had their fill.

Unfortunately I did not ‘factor in uncertainty’ (Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, Sutton & Kramer, 2008, pg.6) and had a few deficiencies:

1.      I did not have the correct amount of taco meat. Our guests were hungry and we went through 70 pounds of taco meat in the first 2 ½ hours.  This required my mother-in-law to make another trip to the store in the middle of the party, to purchase more meat and cook it.  This also increase the expenses of my party budget as the additional meat was purchased at the local grocery store and not by bulk at Sam’s Club (similar to Costco).

2.      In addition to the shortages in meat, the nacho cheese machine was well-loved by all and another grocery store run had to be made.

Though we had rain…lots of rain, we were prepared with tents and tarps and a clean garage. I am blessed to have a great network of friends who helped provide these items as the closer to the party date, it became apparent the sun would only shine for a small percentage of that day.  The planned yard games and bonfires were not to be, but dancing and cards replaced them seamlessly. Because of the atrocious weather of the day, I did not anticipate the amount of people we had invited to actually attend this event; there were also the guests who were not formally invited (son’s friends etc.) that he ‘forgot’ to mention.  All-in-all I feel the party was successful, besides the few drawbacks and the added bonus of an important learning lesson.

 

Resources

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.