CASE STUDY - Project Management assignment

Project Management made easy! (A fictitious case study for learning purposes)

Project overview

You have successfully finished an internship at a small company 'Nextorg' with 25 employees. The company works as a supplier of project management services for other companies. For example, a typical project could be to organise an event for a large company such as a trade fair, an open day for customers, or product shows. The Managing Director was impressed by your attitude and business skills. He asked you if you were interested in helping the company to develop an improved project methodology under the theme of "Project Management made easy!"

As you like the culture and get along quite well with the other employees in Nextorg, you accept the offer.

As a starting point, the Managing Director asks you to write a business report where you compare some project techniques and make a recommendation.

Your report is expected to serve as an input for a new project management (PM) approach to attract new customers to Nextorg who require a systematic and effective PM methodology.

Timescale

Although your report is time critical, a 6 month period is given to prepare, before presenting it to your new colleagues. Please consider progress meetings or other milestones as part of your time planning.

Cost

A total project budget of £5,000 is considered appropriate and sufficient. This sum is intended to cover all costs to finish your report including literature, seminars and travel costs.

The only costs this budget would not cover would be the salaries of colleagues seconded full or part-time to support you. They would draw their salaries exactly as usual with no impact on your budget.

Staffing

Personnel allocated for your study are: a project secretary with a salary at £ 50 per hour, and consultants from PM Consultancy Ltd at £ 100 per hour or 800 per day.

The implementation of the "PM made easy" solution

Work for your report should start immediately. Please elaborate on the following issues as preparation for the future implementation of your recommendations:

Requirements Analysis which needs to be discussed with project managers and should take no more than 25 working days. This should include information about current projects, staff project experience, and current project process management.

This should be followed by Detailed Analysis of PM methodology approaches (15 days), Manual "PM made easy" and Improvement of Project Management (17 days) - these activities can run at the same time and can run roughly in parallel.  As soon as Detailed Description of PM solution is complete you could start Selection of Key Performance Indicators (10 days).

Depending on your requirements for the benchmarking solution, you can create up to 5 more activities and/or milestones.

Presentation of final report is a final milestone.

Please check for public holidays during the project duration.

When asked about who works on what tasks the following information was handed over to you (the letters in brackets stand for: S = Secretary, C = Consultant). Please note that these are only suggestions.

As Senior Project Officer you can adapt this list of activities/milestones as necessary:

• Requirements Analysis (no more than 25 working days)
• Detailed Analysis of PM methodology approaches (15 days),
• Manual "PM made easy"
• Improvement of Project Management (17 days)
• Detailed Description of PM solution
• Selection of Key Performance Indicators (10 days)
• Presentation of final benchmarking report

Further Instructions: Assignment Questions

In the role of the Project Manager you are required to develop a report (including academic references) of approximately 2,500 words in length and not exceeding 3000 words.  Your report should be structured along the following lines:

Part A - General overview - approx. 2,500 words

Select two different methodologies for project management and compare and critically evaluate the limitations of each methodology, selecting one as a preferred approach. Discuss what steps can be taken to improve the overall performance of project management in Nextorg and explore the processes involved in implementing such a new methodology. In addition, justify the key measures and tactics required to measure the success of your recommendation?

Part B - Project Planning - Gantt Chart report (added explanations approx. 250 words)

Given the importance of your report, develop a one-page project plan in Gantt chart form (as if the project had not commenced) for the 6 month duration. You can use project planning software (such as MS Project) for this part. The chart should clearly indicate the critical tasks and the planned end date but ignore progress and resources at this point. Include the Gantt chart as appendix Part B.1. 

Suggest any tactical options to reduce the project duration to 5 months and with this in mind, update your planning and include a second updated Gantt chart as Appendix Part B.2.

Part C - Budget creation - Excel report (added explanations approx. 250 words)

Assuming that the project will run perfectly to the schedule outlined by you in Part B.1 with all contract personnel working as defined on the tasks indicated, generate an overall budget planning for your report using project planning software (such as MS Project).

Create budget positions, within the overall budget limit of £5,000,for:

• Meetings,
• Travel costs,
• Literature and''

Other activities (e.g. training).

Show all calculations and totals via suitable report formats and include as Appendix Part C.1.

When you discuss the agreed total project budget for your report on your first day with the Managing Director, he asks that you prepare an alternative budget plan where you show how a 15% increase of total costs can be justified in terms of additional benefits for customers.

Show all calculations and totals via suitable report formats, and include as Appendix Part C.2. 

Please note that part A should be approximately 2,500 words in length and explanatory notes supporting the creation of information using MS Project (Parts B and C) should be approximately 500 words in length.

Reference - Maylor, H. (2010) Project Management. 4th edition. Pearson Education : Harlow, Essex/UK.