SBIR Phase II: Accelerating Project Management Skills Development through "Experience"; Realistic Rehearsal for Project Teams in 3-Dimensional Immersive Virtual Environments.

该小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目通过使用户能够在身临其境的虚拟世界环境中排练艰难的现实世界挑战，加快了项目管理专业知识的发展。对专家项目经理的研究表明，他们的技能是多年积累起来的，是在失败中学习的结果。加速这一进程将对现实世界失败的成本产生巨大影响。一些研究估计，每年的组织损失高达820亿美元。这些损失被认为在很大程度上是可以通过更好的项目管理教育方法来预防的。项目更广泛的商业影响在于它能够1)降低失败中学习的风险，2)加快有效培训新手所需的时间，以及3)减轻与现实世界中发生的意外错误相关的一些成本。使用身临其境的、基于模拟的、以结果为导向的演练方法，该产品具有以下潜力：1)提高那些实际经验有限的人的项目成功率；2)允许用户无风险地演练和测试部署计划；3)为项目管理新手提供在压力下遇到棘手问题和开发解决方案的机会。该公司的预演方法使参与者团队能够在具有复杂目标的持续业务环境中与实际流程和产品的虚拟副本进行交互。主要的创新将是使用虚拟世界来提供丰富的交互环境，以加速新手项目经理的专业知识发展。虚拟世界环境配备了嵌入式行为和决策监控软件，旨在自动跟踪进度并提供反馈。与专家一起进行的早期试点表明，该方法可能会将专业知识的开发速度加快多达两年。该项目的目标是通过针对项目管理的关键技能来改进用于新手的方法，这些关键技能通常是通过多年的经验学习的，特别是从失败中学习。虚拟世界还提供了一个理想的平台来测试关于新手群体中的技术实施、个人参与度和团队结果的假设。因此，该项目还将解决一些关于新兴虚拟世界平台中发挥作用的关键功能的问题。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project accelerates the development of project management expertise by enabling users to rehearse tough, real-world challenges in an immersive, Virtual World environment. Studies of expert project managers indicate that their skill was acquired over many years and as a result of learning by failure. Accelerating this process would have a huge impact on the costs of real world failure. Some studies have estimated the organizational losses to upwards of $82 billion annually. These losses are thought to be largely preventable with better approaches to project management education. The broader/commercial impact of project lies in its ability to 1) lower the risk of learning through failure, 2) accelerate the time it takes to effectively train novices, and 3) alleviate some of the costs associated with unanticipated mistakes made in the real world. Using an immersive, simulation-based, outcomes driven rehearsal methodology, this product has the potential to 1) increase the success rate of projects for those with limited real-world experience, 2) by allowing users to rehearse and test deployment plans without risk and 3) by providing participants new to project management an opportunity to encounter tough problems and develop solutions under pressure. This company's rehearsal method enables teams of participants to interact with virtual replicas of actual processes and products in the context of an ongoing business with complex goals. The primary innovation will be the use of Virtual Worlds to provide rich interactive environments to accelerate expertise development among novice project managers. The Virtual Worlds environments are enriched with embedded behavior and decision monitoring software designed to automate the tracking of progress and provide feedback. Early pilots with experts indicate that the method may accelerate expertise development by as much as two years. The objective for this project is to refine the approach for use with novices by targeting key skills of project management that are normally learned through years of experience, and specifically, learning from failure. Virtual Worlds also provide an ideal platform to test hypotheses regarding the technical implementation, individual engagement and team outcomes in a novice population. As such, the project will also resolve a number of questions about the key features at play within emerging Virtual Worlds platforms.