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View Full Version : MGMT627 Project Management VU Assignment No 2 Fall 23 December 2011



Vuhelper
12-23-2011, 07:05 PM
Project Management (MGMT627)

Announcement of Assignment 2

This is to inform that Assignment # 2 will be uploaded on VULMS according to the following schedule.

This assignment will cover video Lectures: No. 1 to No. 25



Schedule:

Opening Date: 20 December, 2011

Closing Date: 26 December, 2011



Note:

A 24 hours extra/grace period after the due date is usually available to overcome uploading difficulties which may be faced by the students on last date. This extra time should only be used to meet the emergencies; and above mentioned due date should always be treated as final to avoid any inconvenience.

To open the assignment file, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader/ PDF Reader installed on your computer.



Important:

For acquiring the relevant knowledge, do not rely only on handouts but watch the course video lectures, which can be downloaded for free from



For planning your semester activities in an organized manner, you are advised to view schedule of upcoming Assignments, Quizzes and GDBs in the overview tab of the course website on VULMS.



Assignment:

Instructions:

Read the following case carefully and answer the questions given below
Your answers should be very specific and to the point
No definition or theoretical explanation is required
Use information given in the case and apply your knowledge to answer the questions
Read other important instruction, given on the 2nd page before solving the assignment



Case:

You are the director of external affairs for a national not-for-profit medical research center that does research on diseases related to aging. The center’s work depends on funding from multiple sources, including the general public, individual estates, and grants from corporations, foundations, and the government.

Your department prepares an annual report of the center’s accomplishments and financial status for the board of directors. It is mostly text with a few charts and tables, all black and white, with a simple cover. It is voluminous and pretty dry reading. It is inexpensive to produce other than the effort to pull together the content, which requires time to request and expedite information from the center’s other departments.

At the last board meeting, the board members suggested the annual report be “upscaled” into a document that could be used for marketing and promotional purposes. They want you to mail the next annual report to the center’s various stakeholders, past donors, and targeted high-potential future donors. The board feels that such a document is needed to get the center “in the same league” with other large not-for-profit organizations with which it feels it competes for donations and funds. The board feels that the annual report could be used to inform these stakeholders about the advances the center is making in its research efforts and its strong fiscal management for effectively using the funding and donations it receives.

You will need to produce a shorter, simpler, easy-to-read annual report that shows the benefits of the center’s research and the impact on people’s lives. You will include pictures from various hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities that are using the results of the center’s research. You also will include testimonials from patients and families who have benefited from the center’s research. The report must be “eye-catching.” It needs to be multicolor, contain a lot of pictures and easy-to-understand graphics, and be written in a style that can be understood by the average adult potential donor.

This is a significant undertaking for your department, which includes three other staff members. You will have to contract out some of the activities and may have to travel to several medical facilities around the country to take photos and get testimonials. You will also need to put the design, printing, and distribution out to bid to various contractors to submit proposals and prices to you. You estimate that approximately five thousand copies need to be printed and mailed.

It is now April 1. The board asks you to come to its next meeting on May 15 to present a detailed plan, schedule, and budget for how you will complete the project. The board wants the annual report “in the mail” by November I 5, so potential donors will receive it around the Ramadan when they may be in a “giving mood.” The center’s fiscal year ends September 31 and its financial statements should be available by October 15. However, the non-financial information for the report can start to be pulled together right after the May 15 board meeting.

Fortunately, you are taking the project management course at Virtual University and see this as an opportunity to apply what you have been learning. You know that this is a big project and that the board has high expectations. You want to be sure you meet their expectations, and get them to approve the budget that

you will need for this project. However, they will only do that if they are confident that you have a detailed plan for how you will get it all done. You and your staff have six weeks to prepare a plan for you to present to the Board on May 15. If approved, you will have six months, from May 15 to November 15, to implement the plan and complete the project.

You and your team need to prepare a plan to present to the board. Your staff consists of Ahmed, a marketing specialist; Baqi, a writer/editor; and Samina, a staff assistant whose hobby is photography and has won several local photography contests.

Questions

1. Write down the project objective and a list of your assumptions about the project.

2. Develop a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of the project. (Mark: 5+10)

Vuhelper
12-28-2011, 04:32 PM
SOLUTION:

ASSIGNMENT NO 2

MGMT 627

Question No 1 (Part A)

Write down the project objective and a list of your assumptions about the project.

Answer:

The main objectives of the project are under:

You will make report up scaled into a document that could be used for marketing and promotional purposes.

The report must be “eye-catching”.

You will include pictures from various hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities that are using the results of the center’s research.

You estimate that approximately vusolutions five thousand copies need to be printed and mailed.

The main Assumptions about the project are under:

For making better formation and design of the report we need to be multicolor, contain a lot of pictures and easy-to-understand graphics, and be written in a style that can be understood by the average adult potential donor.

Also include pictures from various hospitals, clinics and long-term care facilities that are using the results of the center’s research and by adding pictures people can attract more easily and efficiently.

Also travel to several medical facilities around the country to take photos and get testimonials.

You will also need to put the design, printing, and distribution out to bid to various contractors to submit proposals and prices to you.

Question No 1 (Part B)

Develop a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) of the project.

Answer:

A work breakdown structure (WBS) in (vu solutions) project management and systems engineering, is a tool used to define and group a project’s discrete work elements in a way that helps organize and define the total work.