Project Management Internship at Burlington Stores
From September 2015 until my graduation in June 2016 I am interning at Burlington Stores. I am working in the ePMO department where I am learning about project management.
Burlington Stores Inc. is an off-price retailer with over 500 stores in the US and Puerto Rico. Off-price retail is a fast growing sector in the retail industry, and continues to be a bright spot in an industry that has faced challenges over the years. Since founded in 1972 Burlington Stores Inc. has quickly grown to be a top competitor in the off-price model. Burlington has worked hard to shed its reputation as just a “coat” company as it now offers products in numerous areas.
I have learned a lot in my role here as a project management intern. After shadowing current project managers, I was given my own projects to manage. I have quickly learned what it takes to be a successful project manager. I have worked on projects ranging from financials to software deployment. Burlington fosters a great environment of growth and learning.
As a project manager intern I am responsible to ensure project deliverables are met within the time allotted. Achieving this outcome is done by initially planning out the project to create a baseline. Meetings with relevant stakeholders are required to help build out the project plan. Then having consistent meetings with your project team to make sure that activities are completed in the time expected. If milestones are not meeting your baselines then concerns have to be raised to upper management. Often, your project sponsor has to step in and escalate matters that aren’t being dealt with. Besides being the main facilitator between all project members (including vendors) I also have to put out a weekly status report. This is a succinct report detailing exactly where the project stands now in regards to activities that are completed, being worked on, and projected to start soon.
My MIS classes have greatly helped me be successful in my role. The class with the most impact has been MIS 3535 – Lead Global Digital Projects, as this is the “project management” class. In MIS 3535 I was first introduced to Microsoft Project which I use everyday to help me plan out the various projects I am working on. Also, I learned the fundamental building blocks of what makes a successful project. The other class with a big impact was MIS 3504 – Digital Design and Innovation. My experience with creating workflows in Visio from MIS 3504 has allowed to me to jump in do the same for my projects at Burlington. Learning about Visio and diagrams has been integral when communicating with the “business” side of my IT projects. It helps to break down the communication barrier when describing technical requirements. My technological experiences in MIS 2501 – Enterprise IT Architecture and MIS 2502 Data Analytics – have helped me be familiar with network architecture and data structures. This knowledge is important as a project manager, because though you aren’t ingrained deep into technology a working knowledge allows you to understand the concepts. This has been particularly helpful with virtual servers, which was taught in MIS 2501. A financial project I am working on required various virtual machines and my prior knowledge helped me facilitate the execution of those deliverables. Last but not least, the flash research papers from MIS 2501 have taught me to write succinctly which have helped boost the quality of my weekly status reports.