Guidelines for SAP Project Plan

The Project Plan is your blueprint for the project. A well conceived project plan is critical in organizing your SAP project and can reduce potential scheduling and logistical problems that can arise during the semester.  Although, the project plan is not shared with the client, please do yourselves a favor and put some thought into developing the plan.

In terms of content, the plan should have two major sections:

1. The first section is about the client and the project. Specifically, this first section will have 5 subsections:

• Summarize your company's history, products, customers and geographic markets. Who are founders?  When was the company started? What do they do or make? Who are their customers? Where are their customers located?
• Identify what you think are key issues facing the company at his point in their development. This is a combination of what the company tells you and your first impressions are of what is going on with the company.

• Clarify client goals for the SAP project (on what do they want you to focus)

• Explain the scope of the project. Identify the three key sections of the strategic plan you will develop and explain where you will address client goals (in what part of the paper will you talk about what the client is most concerned about?)

• Identify team deliverables: What will you submit and when? For example, the project plan, the final  presentation and the final paper (and give approximate dates).

2. The second section of the paper is to establish a plan for how your group willcomplete this project. This  section will not be shared with the client but is essential in establishing the ground rules for the rest of the semester.

Specifically this second section will have five subsections:

• Establish a schedule for meetings (team and client meetings)

o When will your team meet and how often? You should probably have a fixed day of the week and time to meet.
o Also list anticipated meeting dates with clients. You will likely meet with the client three or four times during the course of the semester. Typically the meetings follow this pattern:

• An initial meeting with all teams in attendance. The executives will give an overview of the firm and provide guidance on what they hope to achieve by participating in the SAP program.

• A company tour in groups of 20-30. At this meeting the executives will show you the firm's facilities, describe the operations of the firm, and answer questions.

• A second meeting between your team and the firm's executives. This meeting is likely to be extremely time-limited (probably 10-15 minutes), since the executives will meet with 30+ teams.

• Some firms will return for a final meeting to give last minute guidance as teams prepare the recommendations section.A note about client interaction: When the SAP project uses a casestudy format, one firm is the basis of study for over thirty teams.The client executives will have varying ability to interact withindividual teams beyond the scheduled meetings. Teams shouldmake their communications with the   client as efficient as possible(e.g. only one team member should send e-mails to the client to  avoid duplicate  requests). If teams overwhelm the client withduplicate requests for information or information that  s available through other means (e.g. the firm website), communications will be slowed for all;   consequently, teams should make the best use  possible of the meetings that are scheduled by the MGT 431   aculty.

• Identify and assign specific tasks for each section of the paper- look at the guidelines and decide who will cover each section of the external, internal and recommendations sections. Be clear on how will you divide the workload.
• Decide who the primary contact person for the company is. One person should be responsible for setting up meetings and keeping the company up to date on the status of your plan.

• Appoint the editor (s) (either by section or for the whole paper) and decide when material should be to the editor for editing. Please allow enough time for the editor to do his/her job. The editor needs to have material from team members with enough time to ask for additional information or input asnecessary. The  editor's job is not to rewrite your section.

• Establish a timeline for completion of the tasks. Warning: research and writing take much longer than you think. You cannot realistically collect the amount of research you need to include and write the paper in 1 or 2 days. To develop a realistic timeline, look at the due dates for each section and work backwards to set dates. Remember that in order for the editor to do his/her job, plan accordingly. The editor should have a first draft at least one week before the due date