The Project Canvas travels to Africa — A Story of Project Management Training in Cameroon

Helena Sternkopf
Aug 23, 2017 · 8 min read

I have been working in many projects during the last years: in university, privately, voluntarily and professionally. However, it was the first time during my internship in Cameroon with IPAD Buea, that I was asked to facilitate a 2-day workshop on project management. IPAD Buea is a skill-enhancing institute in the South-West region of Cameroon, that offers different trainings in computerized accounting, computer awareness and website technologies and thus caters for students, young professionals as well as experienced business owners to equip them with necessary skills to enhance their professional future.

At the beginning I was unsure where to begin. I have been in Cameroon only for two weeks at that time, did not yet understand completely how things are handled here and was not sure about what potential participants might expect when it comes to project management training. At the same time, I did not want to share something that works in my reality as a young professional living in Germany, but would be completely irrelevant for realizing projects here in Cameroon.

Thus, the preparations for the workshop appeared rather challenging on a cultural level, but also on a competence levels. Although, I have only been in Cameroon for a little more than two weeks, I already learnt during the first few weeks that improvisation and flexibility is much more appreciated than strict and linear planning. For this reason, we were not really able to estimate how many participants will exactly show up and which backgrounds the participants will have. This made preparing the workshop even more insecure and I wanted to keep the workshop as open as possible regarding cultural particularities as well as varying competence levels. I remembered that Frank Habermann, one of my professors at university, developed a project management canvas in order to redesign project management and wanted to give it a try for my own workshop.

Good news: I found that for a 2-day introductory course in a rather unsure environment, the project canvas came in very helpful as a tool to elegantly balance the exisiting insecurities while being able to transfer comprehensive and relevant knowledge to participants with different backgrounds in a hands-on way. In the following, I wrote down my experience and application of the project canvas in a 2-day introductory workshop on project management.

What is the Project Canvas?

The project canvas is a visual tool to jointly understand, design and initiate projects and have more fun at work. It helps you to jump-start projects and provides navigation throughout the project journey. It covers the most important management areas and fields to consider when planning a project, such as: budget, team, resources, time scheduling, quality management etc. The project canvas and many more project management related information are accesible for free on www.overthefence.com.de a project initiated by Frank Habermann and Karen Schmidt who are both experienced project management experts.

The Project Canvas

Day 1 — A lot of Theory and an Inspirational Closing

It was 4pm when the first participants gathered in front of our meeting room for the first part of the project management workshop. As I learnt, here in Cameroon we live in BMT — Back Men Time, which usually includes adding some 30 minutes to the scheduled starting time, so we started a little later than expected. Nevertheless, the room was full with participants that were excited to learn more about project management.

Since I did not have any idea who the people actually were that looked at me with big expectant eyes, I prepared a poster at the beginning in which everyone could insert their project experience.

Are you a Project Hero?

The participants were able to choose between 3 categories: Project Management Beginner — Project Management Experiencer and Project Management Hero. It turned out that most of the participants were still new to the topic of project management and I was sure that the project canvas would be a great tool to give a comprehensive introduction to project management. Also, the poster was a great format during the two days to provide a visual progress tracking for the participants on their way to becoming more experienced project learners.

The first workshop day was very theoretical. First, there was a general introduction on what makes a project and what can be understood by project management. After that, we went through the 11 building blocks of the canvas and looked at different theoretical concepts of each topic block. Block after block, we thus built the theoretical foundation for the next day, which was planned to be more hands-on. As a base for my preparations, I used the two ebooks by overthefence on the project canvas and project design that are available online for free.

Our Project Canvas

As a last step of the first workshop day, the participants were asked to brainstorm on project ideas that they wanted to work on during the second workshop day. It was fascinating to see that the participants had many ideas when it was time to share. As a little brainstorming help, we set-up three different project categories that the participants were able to brainstorm on: Product — Service and Knowledge Projects. There were projects ranging from developing a new transportation strategy between Buea and Bamenda, engineering a tool that transfers sound into electricity, designing a new service for travel assistance from and to Cameroon and setting up an information center for students on volunteer opportunities. Excited about the projects that would be worked on during the second day, the first workshop closed with a great summary by one of the participants:

„I really enjoyed the talk on projects today. It gave me some hope. Hope to learn more from you tomorrow.“

Day 2 — The Project Canvas in Action

Motivated from how well the first day went and curious about the development of the projects, the second day again started a little bit later and with some surprises. Many participants from the first day showed up, some did not and quite a few new faces were seated in the workshop room. For this reason, I already prepared a short recap of the first day to update the new participants on the theory and tools we worked on during the first day. I had the feeling that this caused some confusion for the new participants, but I was sure that throughout the practical work with the project canvas, the participants would balance the different knowledge basis (which fortunately tuned like this).

We prepared the room with different projects canvases on which we posted the different projects that were suggested the day before. The participants of the workshop had the chance to decide which project they would like to work on and very quickly 6 groups formed to fill out the project canvas together.

In the following you can discover the six projects and the corresponding team. The participants had 60 minutes to:

1 — Find a team name

2 — Define team roles

3 — Fill out the project canvas together

Project 1 Developing a strategy for a entrepreneurship capacity training center for youngsters and women

The Winning Team

Project 2 Engineering a tool that transfers sound into electricity

The Innovators

Project 3 Development of a sponsorship strategy for students in Cameroon that cannot afford to pay tuition fees

The Helping Hand Association

Project 4 Development of a new housing & accomodation strategy for the city of Douala

Team Papito

Project 5 Development of a travel & visa assistance from and to Cameroon

Team Tabi

Project 6 Poetry development and young talent empowerment

Team Ashley

Planning a project together with people that you have never worked together with in 60 minutes seems challenging — and it was. Nevertheless, the discussions in the groups went really well and step by step everyone filled the project canvas. Hereby, some of the fields like deciding on the budget and defining relevant milestones were challenging. However, it was easier for the groups to fill out the results as well as the purpose of the project, which might help them to plan their projects even more focused in the future through having a clear goal in mind.

After the completion of the task, we created a canvas gallery, where the groups briefly presented their project canvases and gave feedback to each other. At the very end, the interconnection between the different building blocks was described and there was time for open questions and feedback regarding the two workshop days.

Canvas Love & Workshop Feedback

Overall, the workshop was a great success and the participants enjoyed working with the canvas. I personally, especially loved the simplicity and logical order of how the project canvas is created and the easy access to a tool that can be used by everyone, no matter which country or background they come from. As a facilitator it was of great advantage that the set-up is easy, and resource-saving. The canvas can be drawn on a sheet of paper, which makes it perfect for resource-constraint environments. It can be easily filled out together and works perfectly as a base for discussion. Therefore, it creates a collaborative learning experience for total strangers while being a wonderful tool to share with people that want to adapt it to their own projects in an independet, yet guided manner.

Participants who mastered the Project Journey with the Project Canvas

Do you have any questions on how I used the project canvas and how it could make sense for you? Feel free to drop me a line!

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Helena Sternkopf

Written by

Data Creative & Design Thinking@Disruptive Elements. Data Literacy & Impact Tech Enthusiast.

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