PM’ing the holidays
By Sheryl Olguin on December 7th, 2010Here at Naviscent, we project manage literally everything, from the most complex iterative research and design engagements to the simplest week-long usability studies. So a few days ago when I attended my friend Christine’s amazing Thanksgiving dinner party (complete with an interesting and eclectic group of guests, live music and delicious food), I thought to myself, “what the heck!” Why not create a project plan for the perfect holiday party? I can tell you right now, having a good plan will enable you to carry off the party without a hitch, and at the same time avoid appearing like an OCD control freak. If done right, it will even give you a politically safe out for dealing with an overbearing “alpha” extended family member bent on running the show. Come on, you know who I’m talking about! So let’s start with what every good project needs, a name and a scope! Let’s call this “Naviscent’s Guest-Centric Holiday Party.” Our scope statement: “To host a fun and memorable holiday dinner party for 25 family members and friends on a budget of $500.”
Our assumptions:
- We have a date set that we’re sure most of the guests can make.
- Guests will bring their favorite appetizer and adult beverages to share.
- We have adequate space, tables and chairs.
- We’ll have adults and kids at this party.
- Dress will be casual.
- Martha Stewart is not on the guest list.
So let’s get the invitations in place! First we’ll create an invitation list, in excel or word, complete with e-mail addresses. Next, we’ll go to e-vite.com and send out invitations. But of course, since all Naviscent personnel are customer-facing, and this is a guest-centric party we will conduct a little research to determine exactly what will make this party fun and memorable for our guests. Our invitations will include a link to a survey we’ve created using an online survey tool. From the survey we’ll find out what food allergies we need to deal with, and what the focus of our “fun” will be.
Let’s assume we’ve learned from the survey that we have a guest who’s allergic to shellfish, and that our fun for the party will be a talent-show in the round, with each guest telling a joke, acting out a short scene from Shakespeare, reciting a poem, or singing a song. Each guest will get to take home a video of their impromptu performance. That’s the “memorable” part.
This means we’ll need to send a follow up to the invitation warning guests that if they bring an appetizer that contains shellfish, it should be labeled in some way to help our allergic guest avoid a reaction. Not to do this would make me selfish about shellfish. Say that three times fast, I dare you! This also means we’ll have to designate a couple of our tech-savvy guests to run the video and burn the .mov files to disc. And we’ll have to be sure to have a kid-friendly joke book, a poetry book, a book of scenes from Shakespeare plays, a guitar and a few other acoustic instruments on hand for the talent-show in the round.
OK, so our menu is going to include Turkey, Ham, a garlic spinach tofu dish for our vegan guests, a selection of side dishes and desserts, and a plate of white bread peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts removed for the nieces and nephews who won’t eat anything they have to chew for more than 2 seconds.
We’ve set aside a budget of $500, with $350 going to food, and $150 going to decorations and other item’s we’ll need to pull off this party.
We’ll need to create a work breakdown structure for this event. We’ll start by identifying the tasks we know we’ve got to accomplish:
- Create an invitation list.
- Send out a “save the date” email.
- Create guest-centric survey at surveymonkey.com
- Send out party invitation through e-vite with survey link.
- Analyze survey results to determine food allergies and entertainment plan
- Send out follow up email regarding food allergies
- Plan menu
- Create list of buy-ahead items
- Create list of perishables
- Purchase buy-ahead items
- Purchase perishables
- Design & print special event labels for the blank CD’s (or lightscribe them)
- Clean house
- Set up tables & entertainment area
- Set up beverage station
- Board the overactive pets for the weekend.
- Food preparation: desserts & side dishes
- Food preparation: main dishes
- Have the actual party
- Serve the appetizers
- Serve the dinner
- Serve the desserts
- Video the talent in the round
- Burn each video onto a pre-printed disc
- Clean up after the party
- Pick up the pets
In order to complete the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) we’ll have to identify for each task who the task owner is, the estimated level of effort, and any dependencies on other tasks. We’ll include some of this in the Gantt chart.
And let’s think about potential risks and contingencies to address them:
- A guest might get a little tipsy: have extra pillows and blankets on hand to accommodate guests that might need to stay the night, or have the number of a taxi company on hand. (Notice this is a contingency and not part of the plan)
- Food allergies: we already planned for this thanks to the survey, but just in case, let’s keep some Benadryl on hand.
- That alpha relative who has to run the show: create a special project he or she can be in charge of, like get a guestbook and have him or her make sure everyone signs it and writes a special holiday sentiment in it.
- The really young kids may need quiet time: set aside a guest room for napping babies/toddlers.
- What about someone getting indigestion after eating one helping too many? Better have some Alka-Seltzer on hand.
Here’s a simple Gantt chart for the party. The Gantt chart looks pretty busy around the actual days of the event, so we may want to assign some tasks to willing helpers. Of course we could always add some other fun items to this project like a Facebook page for the event, or post photos at a photo sharing site. To really make this guest-centric we’ll do a post-party survey to find out what our guests really liked, what they were indifferent to, and what they didn’t like. We’ll take those findings and apply them to our next party! Any lessons learned? Again, we’ll take note and apply to our next party. We won’t forget to compare our actuals against the plan and find out how well we did at staying on track with our budget and time estimates. OK. Now I’m ready for the holidays! Now where’s that Gantt chart for putting lights on my home?













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