Three Hours to Become a Project Manager

Planning the opening ceremony of a museum in Dubai is a daily task for a company like Balich Worldwide Shows, which organizes large-scale events around the world. But it was a great challenge for the students of the Project and Team Management course, enrolled in the Master of Science in Economics and Manag. in Arts, Culture, Media and Entertainment (ACME). "There is no better way to understand how to manage complex projects and very large teams (we are talking about hundreds of people volunteers and suppliers excluded) than to test yourself on a real project and talk to those who work in the field," says Beatrice Manzoni, responsible for the course. "Participating in these initiatives is important for companies too, not only because it is a further opportunity to analyze our work from new perspectives, but also a way to identify fresh ideas and young talents," adds Christina Lidegaard, Balich Project Manager and ACME graduate.

The company's managers attended three lessons: the first two were dedicated to the presentation and definition of the request proposal, during the last one students were divided in teams to work on their projects. "One of the challenges was having only three hours to work on the project and present it in front of the Project Manager," says student Ludovica Salerno. Students' task was to deal with all the organizational aspects: the project charter, i.e. a statement of the scope, objectives, and participants in the project, the organizational breakdown structure, which helps identifying which employees will be responsible for specific parts of a project, the stakeholder analysis, and the Gantt chart, i.e. a type of bar chart used in project management activities which outlines timing, tasks and activities related to the project.

"One very interesting aspect was the context: it is one thing to organize an event like this here in Italy, or in Europe, it is another thing to do it in Dubai, or any other place with a completely different culture, which of course must be taken into account in the organizational phase," says student Fabio Sorrenti. "In our project we tackled this aspect by including the role of the cultural consultant, a reference figure that facilitates dialogue, a sort of cultural mediator," adds Ludovica. "We learned a lot: in addition to working at a fast pace, we understood what it means to comply with the directives given by the client and try to find a way to please both the market and the public. And all this is thanks also to Balich's presence in the classroom, whose managers followed us from the beginning to the end".