Project Description
This project is in conjunction with SUSTAIN SLO, One Cool Earth, and Asset Development.
Charter
This is our project's charter, a constitution that governs execution of the project and provides a holistic scope.
Safety Poster
This is our project's safety poster. It raises awareness of the risks and dangers for working in a garden, our project's site.
Risk and Contingency Analysis
This is the Risk and Contingency Analysis for our project. It lays out the possibilities of project mishaps that can occur and mitigation to those events.
Sustain Risk and Contingency Analysis.pdf
Work Breakdown Structure
Above is our Work Breakdown Structure, a method of planning the project more efficiently. It breaks down the tasks and makes it easier to designate roles. This particular structure is only on constructing our Ap because that has became our achievable main focus.
Gantt Chart
This is our Gantt Chart, a bar chart that provides a graphical overview and schedule of all the necessary tasks.
Sprint
The document provided above is three attempts at a sprint. A sprint is a breakdown structure of a larger task that is broken down into smaller tasks, their estimated time consumption, and tools that are necessary.
Denise: This is my attempt at a burndown chart of my sprint. It shows the time the sprint will take until all the tasks are complete (9 hours).
After Action Review
Just as the name indicated, this step is done after the action. Its intent is to move away from blaming people to learning from our successes and failures.
An ap in construction
Chumash Ap
Tule Reeds
Flamson Middle School
Before
Before
Liberty High School
Greenworks nursery
Mural being painted on the shed
Before
Tree Planting
We, along with other volunteers, helped One Cool Earth and a Liberty High School biology class plant 70 trees in the garden.
Before 
After
Non-Profit Organizations
One Cool Earth
One Cool Earth is a non-profit organization that educates about and preserves the environment. They have three main programs: Educational Programs, Garden Matchmaking, and Native Planting.
Mission
"Create a peaceful, abundant planet with healthy environment for all through planting."
Asset Development
Asset Development is a non-profit organization that helps children to young adults develop assets. They have 40 assets, which are "positive experiences and qualities that all of us have the power to bring into the lives of children and youth." They have found that the more assets that a child has, the more likely they will lead a healthy and successful life.
Mission
"To provide catalytic leadership, breakthrough knowledge, and innovative resources to advance the health of children, youth, families, and communities."
List of the 40 Assets:
http://www.search-institute.org/developmental-assets/lists
http://www.search-institute.org/
Reflections
These are the reflections of three of the four girls who partnered with One Cool Earth and Asset Development in community-based projects for Sustain SLO.
Denise Tran
Safety Poster Reflection
The safety poster was assigned in week three and that week was themed on Safety and Attention. Just knowing the safety rules will not avoid possible risks. Attention is an important component of safety. In my own experiences, I have noticed when I am not completely aware of my surroundings or actions, more accidents tend to happen. This poster made me more aware of the possible hazards and dangers in a garden. Before the poster, I never realized a garden could be a dangerous place! Now that I am aware of this, I understand that I have to share this information with the students who are also working in the garden. This can be easily shared with the poster.
Risk Assessment and Analysis
A simple x (low and high probability) and y (low and high impact) graph helped immensely in brainstorming all the possible risks, or things that can go wrong on the project site. Also, the mitigation and response column helped our group prepare for those risks. Personally, this was the first assignment that made me feel like an actual project manager. I feel like now we can avoid or successfully respond to any risks we may run into on the project site.
Project Charter
One of the more challenging assignment, the project charter proved to be the most rewarding. It was very time consuming because it had to be run through all of our project managers, our community partner, and teacher. Now that it is completed and approved, everyone has a clear idea what the project entails and requires. At first, I thought we were going to manage all three school gardens, but with the project charter, work breakdown structure, and gantt, I realized we don't have the time and resources to do all that. With the project charter specifically, we narrowed our project down to just the Chumash Op, a traditional Chumash dwelling structure.
Work Breakdown Structure & Gantt Chart
As I mentioned before, the work breakdown structure and the Gantt chart helped us realize the actual steps we had to do and our limited time. Because of our time restraint, we discovered that we only had time for one major project. It was fascinating for me because apparently by completing all the smallest tasks, the major task is completed. Also, by breaking the task down, I was able to see all the components that were necessary for that task and roles were able to be assigned to those tasks.
Sprint
The sprint helped us think of what steps we needed to do to accomplish our goal, how long each step may take us, and the tools that were necessary. Other than that, I feel like it had no practical use. When we were in the middle of the action, the sprint was the last thing on my mind. It seems like a good reference for any future project planning.
After Action Review
This tool was the most helpful for me. I normally do this step in my head informally, but having to have a discussion and getting others' input made me realize new things. I will definitely use this tool again in future projects or major actions.
Olivia Pimentel
Safety Poster Reflection
Safety should be a big concern on the project site. Safety is respected and valued in all aspects. I always want to feel safe in the environment I am working in. When people feel safe, they are more likely to feel like they can make a difference. A safe work environment impacts a project's bottom line, so safety and costs associated with incidents have to be planned for.
Risk Assessment and Analysis Reflection
Before we began our project, we had to take into account all of the possible risks or things that could go wrong or happen within our project. Risk analysis is the ability to foresee possible threats to the project and therefore improve our ability to manage any problems that occur smoothly and efficiently. Risk assessment is a great way to study anything in the work environment that might hurt someone and plan the appropriate action to prevent accidents and injuries.
Charter Reflection
The project charter was a long and daunting task, but a very helpful way to plan out all of the proponents of our project. The project charter is like a constitution in some sorts because it governs the working and execution of the project. We had to revise the project charter multiple times to ensure that we inluded all of the relevant and correct information. A project charter is a good way to understand the scope of the project.
Work Breakdown Structure and Gantt Chart Reflection
A work breakdown structure is a great way to plan a project more efficiently. Our project management group has the responsibility of planning the schedule, deciding a functional way to complete the project, and assigning different responsibilities. The work breakdown structure helps to make this planning consistent and provides for effective project execution. The gantt chart is a bar chart used to provide a graphical overview and schedule of all the tasks that need to be completed which provides easy understanding to all group members about what needs to be accomplished to achieve our goals for the project.
Sprint Reflection
Before we actually did the sprint, we met and discussed what tasks for the sprint were and an estimated time to complete each task. To be honest though, I don't really see the purpose of sprints. I mean the work has to get done no matter what, but why call them sprints? Is it for time management to be more efficient?
Cynthia Kotow
Safety Poster Reflection
Safety is a big part of any project, especially when dealing with students on a hands-on project that will actually make a structure. A safe and comfortable environment helps any project succeed. Although I do not understand the point of having a safety poster if we are never going to hang it up anywhere and it will never help anyone be safe. So I viewed this one as one of the more useless assignments.
Risk Assessment and Analysis Reflection
I liked this assignment because it actually made me think about what could happen. I actually thought about what could happen and it was also fun to put the high impact and low probability ones. This is a tool that would be useful to use in other projects in the future.
Charter Reflection
The charter took a lot of time. We talked about it as a group and fixed it a couple times after we had our community partners look at it. Then, after we sent it in, we found out we did a lot of things wrong. Though I did appreciate this assignment because it forced us to think about what our common group goal was. We talked about it and we found out that we had a very vague goal to complete and help with gardens. We would have not really helped very much more than a regular volunteer. It also made us write down our process and steps that we will take to get there. Writing everything down made everything seem more real too.
Work Breakdown Structure and Gantt Chart Reflection
This was another help to the project because it made us do more than just what the charter made us do. It broke everything down into steps and processes even more. It helps us to organize more, and was a useful model to know and look at. I understand how it can be a useful tool to communicate to group members or other people what the project will do and when it will be done.
Sprint Reflection
This was an easy to do chart, the hardest part was just figuring how to make it on the computer. I do not find this a very useful organizing tool, though. The text, list-like part is semi-useful because it organizes what I have to do and when I have to do it. But the burndown chart just states the obvious: when a task is done, then you have less tasks and less time.
After Action Review Reflection
I liked this assignment and thought that it was pretty useful. I sort of informally review things after I am done with it, but it is usually just complaints. With these four questions, I find it useful both personally and in group settings. Personally, I think it is useful because it makes me reflect more on what I could have done to achieve what I planned on doing and why it did not work. In group settings, I like how we are not supposed to point fingers or name names on who did what wrong. We merely state what should of happened, what did happen, why did it happen, and how it could have happened better.
Final Reflections
Cynthia Kotow
Our project is related to sustainability because we planned on mostly using materials that were originally from the sites that we were planning on building the aps or other areas where tule reeds tend to grow. The people who would build the aps would mostly be the students who go to the schools and Cal Poly SUSTAIN members, so the labor would be sustainable too because we would not need to pay outside people. We would build the ap well and with a couple of different materials than the traditional aps, so that the schools do not have to rebuild the ap every year.
Chelsea Bottomley
This project was very centered around the idea of sustainability. The construction of the aps was planned with those concepts in mind as the materials that were collected were from on-site and all plants were harvested in a way to allow for regrowth. The aps are also going to be lasting structures that can help the students learn for years in the future. Lesson plans and activities that incorporate some of the assets are going to accompany the aps so that teachers can allow the students to build more assets while learning in the gardens. With this lasting form of guidance, the gardens at the schools can continue to help students gain more assets in future years and therefore become more successful adults later in life.
Olivia Pimentel
Denise Tran
