Reflection on “The Whole World is watching By Sarah Fister Gale, November 2012”

The article “The Whole World is watching” discussed the complexity of some projects related to the mega-events, such as the Olympics, where in such projects, most of the risks are connected to public perception when it comes to preparations for the event, and that is why stakeholders in these projects can be merciless; however, sometimes that helps the team to stay on track.

The article also discussed the need of advanced project management coordination, especially for this kind of event, in order to keep track to what is happening and also where the money is going, just to make sure that every milestone is delivered on time; without effective project management, it will be a total chaos.

Another aspect of the mega-events, project managers might be managing thousands of people, and all focused on different tasks, so logistics are a very big challenge to overcome, and to stay on track, project leaders must delegate responsibilities by trusting their teams to deliver the needed results, and of course the collaboration between those teams and groups is a cornerstone of the whole operation.

It was also discussed that such events can be costly to the host city; however, that can bring many economic benefits, on one condition, which is having the local support. That also means there will be no second chances on such events, and they have to make it work in front of thousand people in person and also millions of people on television, and that creates a great pressure, so it is crucial to secure a backup for every piece of equipment in order to all presentations at the conference can be delivered on schedule, and regardless of technical glitches; sometimes they had to work backward from the event to ensure everything will be done on the agreed schedule.

One of the interesting technics mentioned, having a risk registry with thousands of entries of varying probabilities, where not all of these risks were on the highest level, but they all had to be considered.

Another event discussed “Taste of Chicago”; one of the world’s largest annual food festivals, which is viewed as a whole lot of projects within one larger event, where everyone has his/her own area to deal with, and where every city agency was also involved in the planning; including the police, healthcare services and some agencies such as the Chicago Transit Authority, so there has to be a huge sense of collaboration to get things done.

Some of the lessons learned from this article is that project leaders need to be flexible, but also they need to know how to put their foot down when it is necessary, and they also need to keep in mind that they cannot give up when things like that happen, they have to do everything they can to solve the problem, and that will be much easier if you have already a strong team. Finally, to get through such events, the only way is to be conscious of the risks, and if something is not going to work, project leaders need to bring people together to talk about it.

Personally, I was one of the designers of the main stadium of King Abdullah Sport City in KSA. It was a huge project with many companies involved in; however, I still find the article an eye-opening to what is going on behind the scenes. I found the risk considerations very interesting in such events, but from my own experience, it is unfortunately underestimated by many projects.

Many companies believe that they can’t afford to think that way, and they have to be optimistic, but I think if you consider risk, that does not make you pessimistic, it makes you in touch with reality, and by assuming that the best scenario will happen all the time, that does not make you optimistic, on the contrary, it makes you dreamy.