In lieu of a flipcam live journal, I thought it may be interesting to flesh out my externship experience at Lockheed Martin through blogging :) My first reaction would be.... whoa! EVM (Earned Value Management) is a complex process; however, LM has a very talented and dedicated team of individuals that support this initiative. The day was filled with introductions, explanations, meetings, conference calls and let's not forget --- acronyms (tons and tons of acronyms). To an "outsider", it felt like they were speaking another language!
Here was today's agenda:
- Introduction to EVM
- Intermediate PPM Team Meeting
- CCB Meeting
- LCS Project Team Report
- Monthly LUG Meeting
I spent the day learning about everything I could possibly absorb with regards the MS2 - IDT Division, PPMS, master planning, spot surveillance, SCARS (no one gets hurt, I promise!), team structure and responsibilities, LCS mega project (Littoral Combat Ship), SPAs, Six Sigma Process, etc... It was a "whopper" of a day, but I really enjoyed learning about all the components, systems and structure that I would be working within for the next several weeks. After getting the basic overview on Day 1, I decided to focus on how could I make connections from what I was observing to my students and their classroom experience. Through each meeting or conference call, I was able to pull away some essential or key points from my observations.
Observations:
- Each team member (Jimmy, Anisha, April and Sarah) are responsible for their own subdivision of the PPM Team, such as End User Support, Audit Surveillance, Training and Team Lead.
- The team is dedicated to improving as a department through weekly check-in meetings
- The team lead (Jimmy) allows his team members to have and share the responsibilities -- they hold each other accountable
- The team is determined to make themselves available to their end users in order to help with various technical or procedural problems within Cobra, OP or WelcomHome.
- In an effort to provide time and support for their end users, the team holds study hall meetings several times per week
- The IM communication tool is ESSENTIAL to their work environment!
- Team members must work with many indivdiuals across distances (i.e., MS2 sites include Manassas, Morristown, Baltimore, Syracuse, Eagan, Akron).
- Oral and written communication is essential to maintaining and preserving partnerships across all divisions and site locations.
- Team developed a list of problems based on recent survelliance data and devised a plan to take each problem one @ a time and "error proof it".
- Team members continuously asked clarifying questions to fully understand the scope of problems.
As I reflect on the concepts explored today, I realized that my team at LM and myself as a teacher have the same goals including continuous improvement for all, working together as a team to solve problems, working together to make our organizations better and maintaining quality for our "customers". As far as my classroom is concerned, I want my students to be dedicated to lifelong learning, collaborating together as a team and working together to make their learning experiences in HS the best that they can be. We want to improve their quality of life in the future and help prepare them for careers and educational opportunities beyond high school.
Classroom Ideas
- Using and analyzing rubrics to assess classwork, homework , projects, understanding, etc... based on specific metrics. Allow students the opportunity to build and create those rubrics. Extend the example that in the "real world" corporations are measured against a variety of criterion, etc...
- Provide roles and responsibilities for students as a class and in teams. We will be using a team-based instructional approach to all Geometry courses this year and will need to brainstorm ideas on roles and responsibilities (more on this later....)
- Allow students to use "Live Meeting" or "Adobe Connect" or some online communication system (LMS or CMS) to conduct and facilitate a conference call... even to another classroom in the building or beyond...
