Blog Assignment: Learning from a Project “Post-mortem”

I really had to sit down and brainstorm in order to come up with a project that I wanted to elaborate more on. I thought of using on the job examples, but I had none. After juggling around ideas I thought of a perfect example that Dr. Stolovitch discussed in the video program, “Defining the Scope of an ID Project”. When he creating a work breakdown structure chart which simply focused on planning a party, I thought that my last party planning project would be a perfect example for this blog assignment.

This project was my sons second birthday. I began the planning process in mid October, because his actual birthday was in mid December. I had two months to plan a party for about eight, very active 2 year old toddlers. My team consisted of my 14 year old daughter, mainly because she love parties and she was the only one interested in helping her mom. We sat down one day and wrote down a list of things to do. When I saw Dr. Stolovitch’s chart, it reminded me a lot of my list. We had to establish a date and time that was conducive for the parents and kids, a theme that would make my son happy, a place to have it, the kids that would be invited, the supplies needed to make everything happen, and the budget that we were working with.

This list primarily came about, because of the poor planning for my son’s 1st birthday party. Many of my guests didn’t show because of the time and place I selected. First of all, the time of the day was too late for the little ones and it was in the cold of the winter. Of all places, I chose Chuck E Cheese’s as the venue. It was too crowded and busy for anyone to truly enjoy themselves. I guess the ultimate problem was that I’d been planning parties for an older child for so long; I really didn’t remember how to plan correctly for a baby.

This year I got it right after learning from my mistakes. I basically found the list to be very helpful, and the end results of this party proved that everything worked out perfectly, even the cleaning up process. I selected an early time in the day, invited most of the kids from my son’s daycare, and I used the basement in my house for the festivities. My daughter and I then cleaned out the basement and baby/kid proofed it weeks before the party, and shopped for the supplies with in budget at that time as well. I did not want to do anything last minute; especially if I couldn’t find the things I needed for his “Cars” theme. I did want to run around town looking all over what I really wanted, pay more for it somewhere else, or have to just settle for anything. That does sound a lot like “Scope Creep”, which means for any variety of reasons the project may become larger than initially planned. Overall, the party was an overall success, with the help from my team “daughter”, my organizational list, and my past experiences.


Stolovitch, H. (2011). Video Program: “Defining the Scope of an ID Project”. Retrieved January 11, 2011 from Walden University, Web site: http://sylvan.live.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=4744643&Survey=1&47=6446129&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=1&bhcp=1