As students in Peter Commons’ Project Management class are discovering, even a fictional city takes a lot of real-world planning.
This semester, the class is building “Barbie and Ken’s Village,” a small Lego city complete with the Wisconsin Dells’ popular Kalahari indoor water park (Barbie hails from make-believe Willows, Wisconsin, after all) using a popular methodology known as Agile project management.
Students work in teams, taking a project and breaking it down into mini projects, also called “sprints,” with multiple tasks. A two-week sprint would normally take 10 days, but for course purposes, “we emulate that in 10 minutes,” says Commons, a senior lecturer in WSB’s Department of Operations and Information Management. “Agile project management started in the tech software industry but it’s definitely catching on in a lot of other areas, too.” In a recent article by Harvard Business Review that cited data from global consulting company Gartner, 44% of firms are currently using Agile processes to carry out their work.
The Legos add an element of fun, Commons says—and as they are medium students are familiar with, the focus can stay on project management learning as the overarching goal.
Several students from each group act as customers, directing the build and providing feedback. The whole process is meant to mimic an authentic project management process and give students a feel for the pressures and constraints that come with working with large teams and managing clients.
Customer and third-year pharmacy student Jenny Velikodanov checks out her group’s progress, making suggestions and eliciting laughter when she recommends tweaking the colors for the hospital since it “looks like a prison.”
But like the best clients, Velikodanov is both understanding and enthusiastic about the prototype thus far; she tells the team she gets that they’re working with a limited budget just as Commons’ voice breaks through the chatter, announcing the ten-minute sprint is up.
“I’m excited to see how it comes together,” she says.
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