I recently (today, actually) had a chance to represent the profession of Project Management at the Coolidge Middle School in Reading, Massachusetts.
In three 30-minute sessions, I used an interactive presentation to brainstorm the project of developing and making available to the market, a green (ecologically, that is) car. My audience was the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders (one grade at a time).
Although I was in competition with a policeman in full uniform and other "cooler" jobs, I think things went swimmingly. I enjoyed it, and my daughter, an English teacher at the school, tells me that from her perspective in the audience - it worked. I had fun, they had...well, perhaps "fun" is too strong of a word, but they seemed to "get it" when I asked them what they picked up from the session.
I used three exercises:
1. A brainstorming session to identify stakeholders
2. A live WBS creation session
3. A brainstorming session to identify risks and then treat the risk, "the car is ugly"
I closed with some examples of PM jobs and an actual snippet from a job posting site showing all of the PM jobs available.
I think this worked much better than lecturing to them.
If any of you PMs who end up getting invited to a Career Day would like a copy of the presentation, I'm glad to make it available to you. Actually I am working with the LEAD Community of Practice of PMI to see how I can share the document within their structure. If that fails, I'll make it available right here on the blog. If you need it right away, contact me through the blog.
Let's keep PM vital by making its wisdom available to our youngest students!
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