Life Skills & Leadership: Unit 4, Session 4: The Project Cycle | Page 53 of 91- Distribute materials to participants when they ask for them. Answer any questions about their project
without volunteering information that they do not ask about.
Note: Make materials visible to participants so they know what resources they might use. Provide what they request but
don’t offer any materials to them that they do not ask for.- At the end of 10 minutes, ask all teams to stop working and give each team a chance to show what
they created. Say:
“All of you worked very hard and came up with some good, creative drawings. However, there are a
few things missing in your drawings.”Note: Typically, teams fall short on the very first step of the project cycle, Identifying. They neglect to ask the facilitator,
who is the ultimate “user” of the project, what is wanted or needed.- Show your drawing (which you made before the class session began) and proceed to point out the
details that are missing from the participants’ drawings. Ask the following discussion questions to help
participants learn from this activity:
Note: Among the discussion questions, those in BOLD are the most important.How do you explain the differences between my drawing and yours?
Which steps of the project cycle did your team use effectively?
Which steps of the project cycle did your team use poorly or forget to use at all?
Why do you think a team might skip part of the project cycle?
If we did this activity again, what would you do differently?
What leadership roles (such as providing a vision or goal, helping others to give suggestions,
listening to others, etc.) were played by different members of your team?
How well did your team utilize all of its members?B. Summary
Conclude the activity by saying:
“You can see that completing even a simple project can be more complex than what you may initially
imagine. There are all sorts of opportunities for the project to turn out very different from what anyone
expected. And it often happens that, once you start on a project, something changes or you receive new
information that forces you to change how you do the rest of the project. However, with good planning,
you can respond to unexpected information and still accomplish the goal of the project.”