An explanation of the need for quality leadership on the project, and the role that a successful project manager can play – the project manager has to be much more than an administrator or coordinator

STUDY CASE

LSE has just completed a refurbishment of its teaching rooms and computing labs in the London premises, to ensure students and staff all have an excellent learning environment and access to the latest technology to support their studies and teaching.

The university wishes to have a major launch event to publicise this (it may help attract students and make the university more competitive) and to celebrate the success of the project. You are the project manager for this event, scheduled to take place during Freshers’ Week in January 2020. You will need to plan this event carefully, ensuring that it is scheduled correctly within the calendar of events and includes formal ceremony, informal opportunity for staff and students to get tours of the building, celebratory elements including food and drink, invitations to local/national dignitaries (remember who opened the building originally!), etc.

The main project sponsor is the Managing Director, represented on the project by the Director of Operations and you have been told the budget for this launch is approximately £50,000.

Also note that you are not expected to have any specific technical knowledge of architecture, building refurbishment or events management, hence any reasonable assumptions may be made (must be stated clearly) and your lecturers will be happy to advise where necessary.

Your work will be marked on the quality of the documentation and understanding of the techniques used and not on how well you have shown you can plan an event

IMPORTANT: It is absolutely essential that your answers are well referenced.  This means that published work (text books, journals, other printed material such as newspapers and credible magazine articles) is used to illustrate your points to enhance the validity and credibility of your work.  Web sites may also be used although in some instances they are less reliable (not peer reviewed or subject to editorial constraints) and hence should be used sparingly.  Failure to reference correctly may result in a particularly poor mark and possible failure.  In contrast, good and extensive use of relevant references that inform and enhance your work will be awarded high marks

Required 15 references Harvard style

INSTRUCTIONS

ASSIGMENT 2500 WORDS

This assignment is based on a fictitious case study (details to be provided separately) that presents students with a business project scenario.  You must take the role of Project Manager and are required to analyse the case study, research the best approach to managing it and develop the following 4 items of project planning documentation, to be submitted as a single, individual report:

•  Abstract/Executive summary 
• Table of Contents 
• Introduction 

1. Sample Project Initiation Document (PID) including:

• budgetary information
• timescales
• objectives
• approach
• key staff, and
• stakeholder analysis (approx. 750 words)

1. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) with at least 20 items.  The WBS should be presented in the form of a table that includes dependencies, milestones, and summary tasks.  You are free to deliver this as a Gantt chart (use GanttProject to develop this).  Include with this table a referenced paragraph explaining how a WBS can be used to help manage the tasks on a project and give a further paragraph briefly explaining the importance of critical path analysis;

THE WBS AND GHANTT CHART IT SHOULD BE IN THE APPENDIX

1. Risk register containing at least 10 fully documented risks, including owner, mitigation and contingency actions, pre-and post- action weighting and scores;
2. Short report to the Project Sponsor, the Director of Operations.  Your report should contain both of the following
3. An explanation of the need for quality leadership on the project, and the role that a successful project manager can play –the project manager has to be much more than an administrator or coordinator.   Discuss the value of strong leadership on a project and, using examples, explain what happens when this leadership is missing;
4. An analysis and critique of methodologies that might be used to run the case study project, comparing Agile, Waterfall and PRINCE2 methodologies.  Explain their strengths and weaknesses and give your recommendation to the sponsor as to which methodology you believe would be best to use.  There is no right or wrong answer for this, hence marks will be given on the basis of how well you have explained and justified your decision.  As with the other assignment elements, reference to examples and theory is very important.

IMPORTANT: So that there is no confusion or doubt, for ALL elements in the assignment, reference must be made to established project management theory. As this is a fictitious project case you are free to make assumptions where necessary and these should be clearly stated in your submission.  Furthermore, you are required to use multiple real project examples (both good and bad) as additional reference sources to help you demonstrate what good practice project management looks like and what happens when it is not applied.

It is also recommended that you include an appendix that contains all relevant assumptions that demonstrate how you arrived at your estimates.