Managing Successful Project Teams in a Diverse Stakeholder Environment: Merging Industry Best Practices with an Education System to Address Critical Human Factors

Across the United States, industry, education and government stakeholders are redefining their partnerships in order to address and reduce critical skill gaps in the current workforce. This represents a paradigm shift in technical and professional education, as well as the collaborative processes utilized in creating and maintaining complex multi-stakeholder talent development systems. In doing so, however, this paradigm shift also presents a huge challenge: education and public sectors are typically not familiar with matured product development and (project) management principles and often do not apply proven industry practices to the definition, design, delivery and improvement of their educational products. The evaluation, acceptance and ultimate implementation of those principles departs from the traditional (United States) culture of education, as it applies new instructional design processes, change implementation processes, and feedback/assessment models. Therefore, critical review of such methods, innovative development of transfer options and human factors management in successfully achieving the required systems change were identified, and include explanation, understanding, acceptance, personal development, and trust. Using a case study approach, this paper will analyze several highly visible and innovative adaptations of industry and educational standards which were accepted and released by all relevant stakeholders. By leveraging subject matter experts from both the industry and academic settings, Michigan Advanced Technician Training (MAT2) formed organizational and working teams comprised of the primary government, industry, and academic stakeholder groups and established a workable context for a knowledge transfer of best practice industry standards. Said standards were applied bi-directionally by academic providers and partnering manufacturing enterprises, and now serve as best practice examples for post-secondary systems of apprenticeship education.