Ranked #1 in the World
This summer 12 Thunderbird students obtained international internships through the University of Arizona/Conacyt Annual Technology Transfer Program. The following post is from Marcelo Nieto, Full-Time MBA.
Every plan and every idea in planning has to be executed with the framework of a project management mindset. The major factor for success at an internship at CONACyT is the skills that only a project management class can provide. Even though I am marketing focused, I became aware of the need to at least take a class on project management and I have never been so grateful for the lessons I learned in Professor Karen Brown’s project management class.
The beginning of the internship required careful investigation of potential technologies at the research center, but once the technologies have been acquired the team is flying solo. This is when leadership through internal discipline and adaptation to the working environment really begins to show in everyone. Because of past team experience I understand that organization can fracture a team. Now I was in a team with other MBA’s and I was uncertain what their mindset would be.
The critical path is universal. Getting all the tasks written down on little sticky notes and color coding them really helped inventory what needed to be done. I know it sounds very basic, but it helps to visualize things in small manageable bits of information so that overload is not an issue.
Not only did the team feel comfortable identifying where the bottle necks were, but we were prepared to deal with them on schedule. I could feel an air of relief in everyone when we moved through the critical path of the project and finally had accomplished all the major steps for final delivery even a few hours ahead of schedule.
I can still remember the feeling of having four technologies and no plan of attack for completing all the reports and presentation on time, only through project planning were we able to accomplish our goal.
Leave a Reply