PMAN634 Team Project Requirements

Introduction

The purpose of the team project is to develop an integrated project management plan for a gropu project - from project evaluation to project closing.  The project requires the students to apply project management tools and techniques covered in this course to a project that closely models a real-life situation.

In practice, the development of a project plan such as this is the result of a group effort.  Therefore, for the purpose of this assignment, the instructor will assign each student to a team of three to five students. This document specifies the requirements of the team project, including selection guidelines, schedule, team reports, deliverables, and evaluation criteria.

Project Selection Guidelines

The scenario described below applies to project selection activities.

Your company has just updated its five-year strategic plan and your team will identify and evaluate three to five potential projects that further the strategic goals of the organization.
Further, your team has been directed to select one of these projects, create a business case, and present your recommendations to a committee chaired by the CEO. Once the selection has been approved by the committee, your team will develop other project planning deliverables. The committee will evaluate your work based on how well the proposed and selected projects contribute to the following strategic objectives:

• Grow revenue by an average of 10% annually over the next five years
• Reduce operational costs by an average of 3% annually over the next five years
• Maximize return on investment and minimize payback period
• Minimize carbon footprint and other adverse impacts on the environment
• Conduct business in a manner that puts a priority on benefitting the local economy

Note: You will have flexibility in choosing your projects. You may use the strategic objectives listed above or create your own.

The project should involve multiple phases (no more than three) with approximately 50 high level tasks (this may result in an artificial situation for academic purposes where the plan is not as detailed as it would be for execution in real life). What is most important here is how the project management processes are applied not the project execution. The project could involve development of a new product or service, major construction project, or a major revision or release of an existing product or service. It must be a long-term one, with fixed price and duration of at least three years. The proposed price includes cost (budget) plus profit. The budget must include the following three types of resources:

• Human resources
• Equipment
• Consumable materials

The emphasis of this assignment is on the management of the project, rather than the technology used in the project. In a real life project, the technological viability of a project is paramount. However, in this course, although the project must be reasonably achievable, its soundness is not a critical factor. For example, in a remodeling project, it is not critical to lay out detailed architectural floorplans or to make sure all the equipment and material are accounted for. Rather, it is important that the project has a logical management plan, work breakdown structure, schedule, cost, etc.

For reference purposes, each team should choose a name for the customer organization (the organization evaluating and selecting the project for the business case) and the project management performing organization (your team) that will develop the project charter and project management plan.

Project Deliverables

Each team will prepare project documents for review, discussion, and approval (team charter, project business case, project charter, and project management plan (drafts/final). In writing your plan, assume that you are working for a company, submitting a project management plan to an executive committee for approval. As specified in the Project Schedule section, each team will present their project management plan reports at the specified week. Class members will review the plans, providing insights, comments, or questions.

Team reports must be posted to the designated course discussion forum for review and discussion. Each report must be self-contained so that the reviewers would have all the necessary information to review the project up to that point. The reviewers should not need to consult previous progress reports to review the current one.

Project Business Case

Each team will first prepare a project business case for their project for approval by the instructor, refer to the Project Business Case template in the Week 3 Content area and to the assigned readings.

Project Charter

The next step for the team is to prepare a project charter for review, discussion, and approval. The weekly readings provide information necessary for the formulation of a project charter, also review the project charter template provided in Week 4 Content area.

Project Management Plan

The rest of the team reports are drafts of the project management plan leading up to the final deliverable. Review weekly readings (articles and PMBOK) to understand how the project business case, charter, and project management plan are formulated/integrated in the project planning stage of the project management life cycle.

The project management plan should cover the following topics, as well as any other topics that are of interest to your particular project:

• Overview
• Objectives
• Scope
• General approach and project organization
  
• Budget
  
• Schedule
• Resources
• Personnel
• Risk management
  
• Evaluation methods
• Project closing

Each team should use the outline provided in the template found in Week 5 content; however, you are welcome to alter the structure of your plan to suit your specific project management needs.

The scope of the project should be broad enough to cover at least the following knowledge areas:

• Project Integration Management
• Project Scope Management
• Project Time Management
• Project Cost Management
• Project Risk Management
• Project Human Resource Management

Final Project Deliverable

Project Schedule

Your project has a number of milestones and a final report. Several of the milestones require team reports, as specified below: