For my internship over the summer, I was stuck in more of a pentagon shaped organizational structure, with the responsibility of reporting to 4 different principals for each portion of the project that I was working on. What made this task even more difficult was the fact that each principal had their own view of the project and it was hard to take all opinions into account and please everyone. My direct boss was the Dean of Students of LAS, she was the one who hired me for this project and was in charge of the Student Academic Affairs office. Me and her had a similar vision for the outcome of this project, but did diverge as the project scopes came into view. Because she had many other responsibilities other than the revision of the website, she delegated the task of redesigning the website solely on me. But because the any public content that represents the college of LAS is controlled through the marketing department, I needed to work directly with the person in charge of web presence in the marketing department. Any changes that I proposed to make had to be carefully evaluated by her as well as the Dean of students.
The other two parties that I had to report to and collaborate with, was the ATLAS department, that was in charge of the actual implementation and programming of the website. And the head of the department for which page I was working on at the moment. The ATLAS department acted more as consultants than someone I actually had to collaborate with, but they did come into play towards the end of the project when we were finalizing the pages. I had to make sure they approved any changes that I made, and that they worked out any bugs in my codes. Collaboration with the department heads was a little more in-depth, just because I was working directly with them and translating their ideas that they had for their section, to functioning webpages.
Because of the varying visions for the website there was a lot of disagreements between all parties on how the final website should look like. Unfortunately because I was the messenger between all of these parties, most of the frustration of the design was vented through me. This system of collaboration became so inefficient that actually I requested a general meeting of all parties halfway through my internship, so we can all be on the same page of what my responsibilities are, and what the dream state of the website would be.
The other two parties that I had to report to and collaborate with, was the ATLAS department, that was in charge of the actual implementation and programming of the website. And the head of the department for which page I was working on at the moment. The ATLAS department acted more as consultants than someone I actually had to collaborate with, but they did come into play towards the end of the project when we were finalizing the pages. I had to make sure they approved any changes that I made, and that they worked out any bugs in my codes. Collaboration with the department heads was a little more in-depth, just because I was working directly with them and translating their ideas that they had for their section, to functioning webpages.
Because of the varying visions for the website there was a lot of disagreements between all parties on how the final website should look like. Unfortunately because I was the messenger between all of these parties, most of the frustration of the design was vented through me. This system of collaboration became so inefficient that actually I requested a general meeting of all parties halfway through my internship, so we can all be on the same page of what my responsibilities are, and what the dream state of the website would be.
This does sound like the multiple bosses problem, which is good given the prompt. But you kind of left the story hanging at the end. What happened to the Web site? Did it get done or is it still a work in progress?
ReplyDeleteOne of the parts that is a little surprising to me is the need for your internship job to begin with. Why wouldn't the Dean of Student Affairs go directly to ATLAS? My sense is that part of their mission is to serve the Dean's office.
The other, related question is if the internship continued into the fall. Sometimes it is hard to make a project like this fit into an allotted time frame. It sounded like your project may have been in that category. Was there some planning up front about what to do in case the project took longer than anticipated?
The main reason for my internship was because ATLAS wasn't allocating the resources and manpower for each individual department in the Student Academic Affairs Office (SAAO), they just had one web-designer working on the overall LAS website.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was offered the position into the Fall, but did not accept because I was taking 18 credit hours in addition to interviewing for jobs this semester. And actually when I was leaving the dean was trying to allocate funds for an "Information Architect", a full-time professional position who would pick up where I left off, as the scope of this project proved too much for a single undergraduate intern to complete. I am not sure if this position was ever filled, but am seeing some of my changes slowly being pushed to the new website.