My Journey

I work for Canfor, and although we have a variety of mills in Canada and the US, I'm focused mainly on the US. We manage over 15 mills, and we also manage data collection from machine centers inside the sawmills. We use the data to generate reports for our on-site employees, which they then use to make decisions when cutting lumber.

We do a lot of digital transformation work. Digital transformation is actually a new term for me. I wasn't even aware that what we did fell into that category. We bring connectivity and collect data in order to provide the mills with easy-to-read reports, views, dashboards, and lumber tags.

I run a lot of projects that branch out into other teams. I found I was having problems defining roles and holding people accountable for their deliverables. There wasn't a lot of structure around these projects that I was doing. I was really looking to get more skilled in that area and make my projects more structured. Everything that I had been doing was from learning from mentors or from trial and error, and there was a lot of error. I decided to enter the program after some encouragement from my manager, who was familiar with it.

My Experience

The program itself is not like other virtual programs that I've taken. I've taken a handful of programs that are a grind where you just read course material and then take a test. This was the complete opposite – and it worked really well with my schedule. The projects were very interesting and informative. The lectures were about 30 to 60 minutes, which to me is the perfect amount of time to learn a few very important ideas without the lecture dragging on and losing focus.

The program brings together a lot of different folks from different areas from different parts of the world in different types of business. It was interesting to learn that although my classmates came from different industries, what I do isn’t that different from what everybody else does. You really start to see that everyone is experiencing the same issues – like pestering people about deadlines.

Learning about all the different project management tools was a revelation to me. Previously, I thought I could manage my projects with only a word document and an excel spreadsheet. That's not going to cut it, and you create a lot of problems for yourself by not using the right tools. That really opened my eyes as to how I should prepare for the first project meeting to really set the tone for the rest of the project.

Highlights

Learning about project management tools, such as the RACI chart, it’s so simple and important for your projects. I applied that to one of the projects I was working on while I was in the program, and it made it abundantly clear to the project team who was responsible for what project activities. I am going to use this in every one of my projects moving forward.

Another highlight was my classmates, who I learned so much from. Ekanem Mboto, in particular, brought a lot of amazing things to our group. She’s a systems analyst as well, and she was very well-versed in a lot of the tools that we were learning about. She was very well structured and put together. I learned a lot from her about being prepared as well as different tool sets and things that I can add to my tool belt. It’s always great to meet somebody who's passionate about their job, and she definitely is.

Advice for Future Students

Go into the program as open-minded as possible. I think a lot of people get tunnel vision when it comes to projects – I know I definitely did and still do. When you get too focused on specific areas, you lose the big picture. Also, learning about all the tools may seem a little overwhelming at first, but if you take your time to learn them and apply them to your projects, it will make a world of difference.

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