Exercises: The challenge as a goal

Explain the features of a well-defined challenge (specific, measurable, achievable, time-bound). Rewrite this vague challenge so that it meets these criteria: "we want to improve break time".

What three elements does every task in a plan need to ensure it moves beyond good intentions? Apply them to organising a school party: write three realistic tasks, specifying the person responsible, the deadline, and how you will know they are completed.

The figure shows the $6$-week schedule for the breakfast stall at the fair: each bar represents a task, and its length shows how many weeks it takes. The last task is covered with a question mark.

1. a) Consider which task occupies weeks $5$ and $6$, right before the fair, and justify why it cannot start earlier.
2. b) State which tasks overlap in week $2$ and explain what would happen to the rest of the plan if "Buy supplies" is delayed by one week.

Explain the difference between a goal and a well-formulated challenge. Turn these vague goals into measurable challenges: (a) 'sell more than last year'; (b) 'have lots of people using the app'. Remember: specific, measurable, achievable and with a deadline.

Define what a task, an owner and a deadline are within a plan. Write the list of the first four tasks for organising the school's chess tournament, each with its (made-up) owner and its deadline.

Explain what a milestone is in a project (an important checkpoint date) and name two reasonable milestones for the 'breakfast stall for the May fair' project. How does a milestone differ from an ordinary task?

Classify these challenges as well or badly formulated and correct the bad ones: (a) 'get $50$ followers on the project's account before the $20$th'; (b) 'be more sustainable'; (c) 'hand out $200$ flyers in the neighbourhood on Saturday morning between four people'; (d) 'have the fair go well'.

Explain what breaking a challenge down into tasks means and why it makes starting easier. Apply it: break down 'organising the end-of-year party' into at least five tasks and point out which one you would do in the first week and why that one.

Break down the challenge "set up a healthy breakfast stall at the school fair in $6$ weeks" into at least six ordered tasks. For each task, indicate which previous task must be completed before starting it and how many days you would allocate to it.

Your team estimates the project timescales: design $4$ days, buying supplies $3$ days, assembly $5$ days, and trials $2$ days. Design and purchasing cannot overlap, but assembling the stall and conducting the kitchen trial run can be done simultaneously by different team members.

1. a) Calculate the total duration if everything is done sequentially, and the duration if you take advantage of the overlap.
2. b) Explain what conditions are required (people, materials) for the overlap to work in practice and not just on paper.

The market team plans with zero margin: each task finishes on the exact day the next one starts. Explain what a time buffer is, where you would place it in that plan, and why planning without a buffer is a recipe for delay. Give an example of a typical unexpected event at school.

Your challenge: 'sell $150$ school badges in the $3$ weeks of May at $1,50\ \text{€}$ each'. Break it down into a plan: designing $4$ models (week $1$), a quick survey to choose $2$ (week $1$), ordering from the printer (week $2$), selling at break times (weeks $2$ and $3$).

1. a) Assign owners and dates to each task and point out which tasks depend on others.
2. b) Calculate how many badges a day must be sold over the $10$ selling days and explain what you would do if halfway through you are at $50$.

The short-film team has $20$ shooting days and $4$ scenes: school ($6$ days), park ($4$), the director's house ($5$) and station ($3$), plus $4$ days of editing that can't start until the shooting is finished.

1. a) Calculate the total duration in sequence and explain whether the park and house scenes can be shot at the same time (different actors): how much time would be saved?
2. b) The lead actor breaks an arm and can't shoot for $5$ days. Redo the plan, explaining which scenes you bring forward and where you place the buffer.

A team formulates its challenge like this: 'we want this year's fair to be unforgettable'. Explain why that challenge can't be planned (how do you know if you have achieved it?), and rewrite it as two different measurable challenges that could be hiding behind 'unforgettable' (attendance, sales, measured satisfaction). What is lost when emotion is turned into a number?

The cooperative is planning the fair with these tasks and durations: permit ($10$ days of waiting, cannot be expedited), product design ($5$ days), purchasing materials ($3$ days, after design), kitchen test ($2$ days, after purchasing), outreach ($3$ days, can start after design).

1. a) Outline in words the sequence of tasks and calculate the minimum duration of the project if the permit is requested on the first day and outreach runs in parallel.
2. b) Explain what the critical path of the plan is (the chain of tasks that determines the total duration) and why a delay in "outreach" is less concerning than one in "kitchen test".

You can do it on paper and send a photo with your answer.

Your team sets itself the challenge 'raise $500\ \text{€}$ for the neighbourhood NGO before Christmas'. There are $8$ weeks left. Set up the plan: two activities (a market and a concert), how much each one must raise, which week each activity goes in, which prior tasks each one needs, and a control milestone in week $4$ with its criterion ('if we haven't reached $200\ \text{€}$, we activate…').

Last year, the fair team started the first week "seeing how things went", bought supplies without a list (they forgot cash float for change), set up the stall the night before, and arrived at the fair without having tested the recipe. They sold half of what was projected.

1. a) Reconstruct what went wrong with the planning, step by step.
2. b) Write this year's plan so that it does not happen again: a clearly defined challenge, tasks with deadlines, an intermediate checking milestone, and a buffer for contingencies.

Draw up the full project plan for your class project (or for the breakfast stall): a challenge defined in a single verifiable sentence, a task list with leads and deadlines, two dated milestones with clear completion criteria, the two most likely risks and your contingency plan for them. Defend the two hardest decisions in your plan.

A school cooperative of 4th year ESO students is debating how to frame the challenge for their healthy breakfast stand for health week. They have an initial budget of $60$ €, a $30$-minute recess each day for $5$ days, and two people running the stand. Each breakfast costs $0,80$ € to prepare and will be sold at $1,50$ €. The estimated service time is $1$ minute per customer.

The team is debating these three challenge proposals:

• Proposal A: "Sell as much as possible and be the high school's favorite stand".

• Proposal B: "Serve $250$ breakfasts every day during recess".

• Proposal C: "Sell $50$ breakfasts in total by the end of the week".

1. a) Analyze the economic and operational feasibility of the three proposals: calculate the physical limit of customers they can serve per recess and the limit of breakfasts they can initially produce with their budget. Justify why proposal A leads to operational paralysis, why proposal B will demotivate the team by being mathematically unfeasible, and what incentive and profitability problem proposal C presents.
2. b) Design the final formulation of the challenge in a single testable sentence (with a quantitative goal, timeframe, expected revenue, and a quality or satisfaction indicator) that balances ambition and operational feasibility. Justify the chosen figures.

Last year's team set out to 'put on the best school market in the history of the school'. It failed: with no figures they didn't know whether they were on track, they argued about what 'best' meant and everyone pulled in a different direction.

1. a) Analyse which three formulation problems that challenge had and how they contaminated the whole plan.
2. b) Write this year's challenge properly formulated (with figures, a deadline and a success criterion) and the two rules you would put in writing so that the team doesn't go off track.

Your class has $6$ weeks to prepare the entrepreneurship fair and these tasks: choosing the product ($3$ days), validating it with a survey ($4$ days), the budget ($2$ days), the purchase ($5$ days after the budget), production ($10$ days after the purchase), publicity ($7$ days, after choosing the product) and setting up ($2$ days, at the end).

1. a) Set up the schedule week by week, marking what runs in parallel, and calculate whether you will make it comfortably or just barely.
2. b) The supplier warns that the purchase will take $10$ days instead of $5$. Replan: what moves, what can be brought forward and where you place a buffer, explaining each decision.

Two teams receive the same challenge: 'sell $100$ breakfasts at the fair'. Team A breaks it down into subtasks with dates and reviews every Friday; team B has it 'very clear in their heads' and works 'when they can'.

1. a) Predict what will happen to each team the week before the fair and explain what psychological mechanism makes a written plan push people to act (commitment, small tasks, a sense of progress).
2. b) Write team A's weekly review board: which three questions they ask each Friday and what they do when a task is delayed two weeks in a row.

Your team has set the challenge 'that $80\ \%$ of students know about the book swap point before December'. One teammate says it is impossible and proposes 'doing some publicity'.

1. a) Analyse the debate: what risk a challenge perceived as impossible has and what risk an activity without a goal has ('doing publicity' never ends nor gets evaluated).
2. b) Propose an intermediate reformulation with two rungs (a minimum goal and a stretch goal) and explain how to keep the ambition without breaking the motivation.

Produce the 'one page' document of the project your class is going to launch this term: the challenge in one measurable sentence, three milestones with a date and a success criterion, the list of the six main tasks with an owner, the two most likely risks with their plan B, and the date and format of the weekly review. Defend in front of the class the two decisions that were hardest for you and explain why one page forces better thinking than twenty.