#7124 Topic: Introduction to Project Management

You are the Project Manager in charge of a large training project for Cool Widgets, Inc. a fictional company. As part of one of its long term strategic goals to streamline internal operations, Cool Widgets is standardizing on a single business suite of tools, and has decided to switch to Microsoft Office for all of its employees.

Because Microsoft Office is very different from the current business software used in the organization, you need to develop a project plan for training the organization’s 500 employees. There are five offices which are located in five states (CA, NY, TN, MT, NV). There are 200 employees in the corporate office in California and 75 people in each of the four branch offices. You have a budget of $200,000 and a team of four course developers and trainers (Sandra, Palo, Aaron, and Alesha). Your team may use a portion of the budget allocation to engage some outside services where appropriate.

Your team is charged with creating the educational materials, planning the courses, and delivering the training to the employees. The rollout of the new software will begin in three months and be phased in to the organization over the following nine months, making your training project 12 months in duration. (Hint: this section contains the elements of the scope statement you will need to create.)

You need to create a project plan for the employee training that addresses the five process groups defining a project’s life cycle according to the PMBOK guide in section 1.3 (Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring/Controlling, and Closing). Your project plan needs to include all of the deliverables and activities that will be required to train the employees on the new business software. Your project will include a WBS, a critical path analysis, a project cost report, and a status report. Your work on the Cool Widgets training project will form the basis of your final project for the course.

General MS Project Plan Outline – (Major Deliverables are in bold)

Your final project plan outline can include additional elements if you desire.

· Training goals

· Develop outline

· Training materials

· Write outline

· Gather materials

· Assemble takeaway handouts

· Electronic and/or paper

· Training plan

· Identify and schedule venues

· Work with onsite and/or offsite facilities personnel

· Reserve training equipment (projector, PCs, power strips, etc.)

· Send electronic materials (and/or ship hardcopy takeaways)

· Select/engage external trainer for NY

· Engage caterers

· Travel schedule

· Select travel dates

· Reserve air travel, transportation, and lodging

· Training delivery

· Notify students

· Set up and test training equipment

· Deliver training

· Student survey

WSM – External Resource Selection Criteria (to use in your final project)

Because Cool Widgets’ branch in New York is a two hour drive north of New York City, your team has elected to engage an outside resource to do the training for your company in this branch location. A weighted scoring model (WSM) will help you identify the best training resource choice for this branch. Use the following criteria and assign your own weights to them to create a new WSM from the template used in Week 1.

· Training firm location

· Trainer’s experience with material to be delivered

· Cost

· Trainer availability

· Client references