Dream Project Assignment
What willYOU dream up to do with 25 productive labor hours and a budget of up to $60?
Background:
In order to really drive home the lessons from a first class in project management, it is critical that each of you actually experience both the initiation/planning process, and the reality of executing and closing a “real” project as part of a team, using sound project management methodologies. Rather than have me (the instructor) assign my own idea for a group project, which would likely be boring, each of you will instead propose your own plan for a group project, based on your own personal preferences, skills, and creativity.
After each student has submitted a proposal, we will all participate in evaluating the proposals, in order to determine the 8 best projects, which will be selected for execution. I will then guide us through a team formation process, and each of the selected projects will be executed by a team. The individual who proposed a selected project will be the de facto “project manager,” but the authority of this role will be limited for this classroom exercise. The team will work together for a few weeks to refine the plan, and then finally execute the plan in the week after Thanksgiving.
I am highly confident that given about 40ideas from students, we will be able to find at least 8 really good ones. This document defines the constraints and objectives for both the Dream Project Team Phase, and the Dream Project Proposal which will be performed by each student individually. Your grade will be determined by how well you fulfill the objectives defined here, staying within the constraints.
Dream Project Team Phase
Purpose:
The purpose of the Team Phase will be to execute a “community service” project, but the definition of “community service” can be treatedas being very loose. A “traditional” community service project, like cleaning up a polluted street or park, would indeed fulfill this objective, but so would an end-of-the-semester party for the members of OPIM 3801, or a program to provide free coffee and donuts to students during finals. The only real constraints on the definition of community service are that the project must identify a group within the community, provide them a beneficial service, and not cause harm to any other group, or violate any laws or university regulations. It is totally reasonable to leverage any other relationships or experiences you have. (If you already do community service of some kind, use that experience, etc.)
Objectives:
A successful project will fulfill the following objectives. The better the score in each area, the better your grade will be.
- Positive impact on the community. The community or group served should appreciate the service provided. Further, anyone looking at the results of the project (fellow students, professors, university administration, your parents, etc.) should be able to say, “That was a good and nice thing that they did.”
- Fun! This is the number one reason why I (the instructor) am not dictating ideas for projects myself. I want you all to enjoy this process, and I think that you, the students, will do a much better job than I could at coming up with something that you and your peers will think is fun.
- Appropriate Complexity. Project Management software and methodology are designed to help a PM cope with a complex group of activities (tasks.) In particular, there are often several tasks occurring simultaneously, and tasks can be grouped into several phases. For our purposes we do not want our projects to be incredibly or overly complex, but we do want to have projects that have some team members working on various efforts independently, with different contributions from earlier preparatory phases coming together to launch the next phase.
- Comprehensive Planning of Tasks. The plan should detail all major tasks that occur during the execution phase and should not omit any steps. This includes clean-up or any other closing activities. Teams will meet to refine the original plan from the initial individual proposal.
- Meets Objectives Successfully. The objectives of the project will be formalized in a project charter, and each objective should have a deliverable or metric to gauge the team’s success in meeting the objective. A project that does better at achieving its initial goals will score better, but if a project fails to meet one of its goals, a comprehensive “lessons learned” documentation of the failure may compensate for this downside, especially if the documentation gives a realistic explanation of how the goal could be met if a similar project were implemented in the future.
- Closing Documentation. Following the execution of the project, the team will meet one more time to compile closing materials. These will include a short description of the successful aspects of the project, as well as a short “lessons learned” document. The closing documentation will also include a team member assessment, in which each student will submit a brief, confidential evaluation of the contributions of his or her teammates.
Dream Project Proposal
Purpose:
The Dream Project Proposal emulates the experience of pitching your own project to a project management council, as well as participating in such a council to evaluate and select a portfolio of projects. Every student will have the ability to demonstrate proficiency in MS Project and familiarity with PMBOK concepts regarding the initiation and planning of projects.
Deliverables:
1. Preliminary topic submission will occur early on in the process to allow me to approve of the general idea. This submission will be short, about one paragraph or 3-6 sentences, and may be submitted via email. If I disapprove of your topic, I will ask for a resubmission of a topic until we find a good one.
2. The proposal will contain a detailed project charter, submitted as a MS Word document, and broken down using the PMBOK elements of a project charter as outlined in the eight bullet points on pages 228 and 229 of Meredith and Mantel, eighth edition.
3. A Microsoft Project file containing the detailed plan of the project. The project should have a start date for execution and a comprehensive list of tasks to be performed. Task interdependencies should be specified with the appropriate links between tasks, and all tasks should be assigned durations and resources (personnel.) The resources may be specified generically (Team Member 1, Team Member 2, etc.) or may be given specific roles (cook, host, clean-up crew, etc.) The project should be planned around a team of five members, each contributing up to 5 hours of productive labor. Notes on the team members should include requests for special skills or characteristics. (For example, I am proposing a social event to promote awareness of the MIS-certificate, so I would like to request that all or most of my team be part of the MIS-certificate program.)
4. A detailed budget of expenditures(if any) in a MS Excel file. The total expenditures may not exceed $60. No money may be collected from a team member (all team members volunteer to work for free) and inappropriate or fraudulent use of University funds may be subject to disciplinary or legal action. All actual expenditures made in the team phase will be approved by Pr. Day and Pr. Gopal.
Scoring:
Each proposal will be scored by me and several other students. Each student will score about six proposals submitted by their peers, awarding a number between one and ten in each of the following categories. Scoring is based on potential for success in the Team Phase, and the proposals with the highest scores will be selected for execution, subject to veto power by me.
Scoring Categories:
- Potential for Positive Impact on the Community
- Potential for Fun
- Appropriate Complexity
- Comprehensive Charter
- Comprehensive Project File
- Comprehensive Budget
- Feasibility of Meeting Objective /Low Risk of Failure or Backlash