The Instructional Systems Management course in the Educational Technology program was quite the labor of love. The course opened my eyes to process driven world of project management. You can view the final submission for the class above.

There is always gratification in being assigned reading material for a college class that directly translates to your current job. I discuss the benefits of this course and how it assisted me in my instructional systems design role as a government contractor in my reflective essay. In my Instructional Systems Management course we had the assigned readings of the "Project Management Absolute Beginner's Guide."

The first chapter is when the real concepts of "project management," begin.  The most important realization I had was differentiating "project management," from "ongoing operations." I had heard the term "ongoing operations," referred to before in meetings with mangers. However, I had no idea "ongoing operations," is a very specific business verbiage with an umbrella of concepts behind it. Another term is "business as usual" but I prefer the ongoing operations terminology.   The below block-quote describes the deference between the two concepts.

... Examples of projects include the following:

• Building a new house

• Developing a new software application

• Performing an assessment of current manufacturing processes

This is in contrast to the operations of an organization. The operational work is the ongoing, repetitive set of activities that sustain the organization. Examples of ongoing operations include the following:

• Processing customer orders

• Performing accounts receivable and accounts payable activities

• Executing daily manufacturing orders

The above management speak is something I had never understood before. My career in eLearning has almost always been project based. Even the community college course I taught may happen on a routine basis, but every semester, it's a new group of students with different ways of obtaining the end goal. I interface with quite a few ongoing operations folks. Most notably the, subject matter experts. It's clear why some SMEs are resistant to eLearning projects. They can take away from their ongoing operations. The entire project management course has definitely helped me in the business world.

Published by Rob Meyers in Learning Artifact