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Structure, Organization, Ease of reading, Grammar: 2 Points

· Did you write this to be easy to read?  For example, have you avoided huge blocks of text with no headers? Did you use (sparingly but where needed) highlighting (bold, underline, italic text)?

· Did you follow the structure of the sample Assignment 1?

· Did you follow the advice given in the lectures and From Your Instructor about the format?

· Did you follow rules of English grammar, spelling, and syntax?  Did you fix errors pointed out via Word’s editing capabilities (e.g. squiggly blue or red underlined text)?

Content: 5 Points

· Did you find an interesting project?  Did it come across that you yourself seemed interested in the project?

· Did you inform the reader about the project so that you could discuss it intelligently with someone else?

· Did you link the project to the organization’s mission, vision, and values?

· Did you make assertions, such as “this project was a success”, or “this project is used as an example a to how NOT to run a project”.

· Did you provide numbers – percentages, monetary amounts, resources used, etc., to make their point?  In particular, did you tie into the course content regarding NPV, IRR, Payback Period as suggested?

 

References and resources: 1 Point

· Did you provide at least 2 references to a business journal or scholarly source to make a connection to the principles of mission, vision, values, benefits realization, charter creation, or other project, program, or portfolio concept?

Other things to consider:

· Did you add value from your own professional and/or personal experience

· Did you make appropriate use of figures and tables in an appendix?  Don't substitute quantity for quality here - one good, relevant, and meaningful small table is worth 100 randomly inserted graphs and charts.

Duke University

Project Management

Assignment 1
Rationale for Little Rock, Arkansas’ new Dog Park

Leif F

ASSIGNMENT 1

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary is a brief paragraph to summarize the report. Imagine you’re your reader is a busy executive who wants the ‘elevator speech’ the main idea in short form. The idea is not to tease them into reading the paper by saying what you will provide. That’s an abstract. We do NOT want an abstract. Think of your audience. She or he wants the bottom line exposed right here, not a promise, that “in this paper, I will describe....” NO! They want to know (in this specific case) a little about the project you have selected and the connection of that project to the mission/vision/values of the organization. The length should be about the same as this paragraph.

Contents

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 2 Description of the Little Rock XYZ Dog Park Project................................................................... 3 City of Little Rock – Mission, Vision, Values, and its connection to the Dog Park ...................... 4 Financial and Other Justification .................................................................................................... 5 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 6 References:...................................................................................................................................... 6

ASSIGNMENT 1 F

Description of the Little Rock XYZ Dog Park Project

You would use this area to describe the project you have selected. How big was it, how much money, time, are involved, what is the scope of the project, who are the key stakeholders (people who CARE about the project while it is under ‘construction’ and when it’s done and providing its benefits). This will likely be about one page of text. Below is some filler text, in a weird form of Latin, I suppose, just to show that length. Don’t forget to use references to show where you found the information.
Justo erant quidam ei ius, nostrud dissentiunt accommodare no duo, pri prima deserunt consequat ex. Ex vim reque graeci delenit, cum te paulo aliquam interpretaris. Cu ius hinc simul eligendi, eu vim tale falli nostro. His quod eirmod in. Eum meis docendi et. Mea ut ridens electram, mea accusata consectetuer ei.

Sale atqui intellegam sea eu. Nec cu essent apeirian, summo persius offendit ex est, nec sonet exerci epicuri id. Torquatos percipitur ex eum. Duo iusto zril cetero in. Augue postea pertinax te mel, ei sea ponderum maiestatis.

Nominati dissentiunt in cum. Cu tale simul antiopam pro, hinc nihil duo at, copiosae euripidis vituperata eam ex. Qui alii molestiae elaboraret ex, iudico doctus elaboraret est eu, singulis conceptam ad pri. Dolor accusam ne eum, illud essent audire id mea. Errem choro comprehensam vim ex. Ea nonumy intellegam eam, magna illud discere sea eu.

ASSIGNMENT 1 F

Ea eam suas diam disputando, dicant quodsi id mea. Commune imperdiet quo cu, pro ei graeco habemus alienum. Nec no quaeque mandamus similique, nam essent urbanitas temporibus ut, et usu justo malorum adipiscing. In vis facete facilisi assueverit. Esse justo ex has.

Duo illum similique id. Eu epicurei luptatum pro. Ei velit eirmod debitis has, ut vitae mentitum vim. Te suscipit abhorreant has, omnis praesent intellegat ut quo. Purto voluptaria id qui, sit iusto tractatos definitiones no.

City of Little Rock – Mission, Vision, Values, and its connection to the Dog Park

Little Rock city mission
It is our mission to ensure our City is a safe, secure, and prospering place for all to live,

work, and play. (Little Rock City website).

You may elaborate a bit more here, perhaps adding one or two more paragraphs expanding on the mission, and/or adding values and vision statements. Again, phony Latin text illustrates the approximate length.

Sale atqui intellegam sea eu. Nec cu essent apeirian, summo persius offendit ex est, nec sonet exerci epicuri id. Torquatos percipitur ex eum. Duo iusto zril cetero in. Augue postea pertinax te mel, ei sea ponderum maiestatis. Sale atqui intellegam sea eu. Nec cu essent apeirian, summo persius offendit ex est, nec sonet exerci epicuri id. Torquatos percipitur ex eum. Duo iusto zril cetero in. Augue postea pertinax te mel, ei sea ponderum maiestatis.

ASSIGNMENT 1 F

The connection to this project
This section IS IMPORTANT. Here you would show how the project FITS INTO the mission, vision, and values of the organization. If the organization is focused on saving lives of dogs in kill shelters, a space-shuttle launch would not be a very-well-connected project. A project, however, to build a website for that dog-saving effort, would be a good fit. Similarly, the development of a new type of rocket fuel by NASA may fit well into a space-shuttle launch, but a new website for a dog-saving organization would not. This can be short but it should be very powerful in terms of making that connection crystal clear. Some more phony text below illustrates an expected length for this section.
In the case of the Little Rock Dog Park, you could explain that the establishment of the dog park would fit neatly into the “play” part of “a safe, secure, and prospering place for all to live, work, and play”.
The length
Duo illum similique id. Eu epicurei luptatum pro. Ei velit eirmod debitis has, ut vitae mentitum vim. Te suscipit abhorreant has, omnis praesent intellegat ut quo. Purto voluptaria id qui, sit iusto tractatos definitiones no. (Petropoulos 2016).
Nec no quaeque mandamus similique, nam essent urbanitas temporibus ut, et usu justo malorum adipiscing. In vis facete facilisi assueverit. Esse justo ex has.

(Moon 2017).

Financial and Other Justification

ASSIGNMENT 1 F

We learn about Net Present Value and Return on Investment and other financial means to justify (to provide a rationale for) a project. It is in this section that – if you can find it – you would put a summary of that rationale. You don’t need to include all of the math (the calculations), but if you find, for example, that the project was determined to have a NPV of $140,300, you can place that info here. Include, if available, some of the basic figures and calculations. If you have lots of tables and figures (don’t overdo it, just a few, if you want), include them in an Appendix. The teaching team understands that not all projects have financial measures, so if you don’t have it, just expand a bit on the meaningfulness/importance of this project to the mission/vision/values of the organization.

Conclusion

Use this section to briefly wrap things up and tie together your thoughts. Just one paragraph is sufficient.

NOTE TO STUDENTS: We do not expect you to have 30+ references as you see below, only a few are required. However, this happens to be a reasonable list of potential sources for the actual Assignment and also shows the scholarly nature of the sources that we prefer.

References:

1. Baker NR: R&D project selection models: an assessment. R&D Manag 2012,5(1):105– 111. 


2. Brenner M: Practical R&D project prioritization. Res Technol Manag 1994,37(5):38– 42. 


3. Bstieler L: The moderating effects of environmental uncertainty on new product development and time efficiency. J Prod Innov Manag 2005,23(3):267–284. 


ASSIGNMENT 1 F

4. Cicmil S, Williams T, Thomas J, Hodgson D: Rethinking project management: researching the actuality of projects. Int J Proj Manag 2006,24(8):675–686. 10.1016/j.ijproman.2006.08.006 


5. Cook WD, Green RH: Project prioritization: a resource-constrained data envelopment analysis approach. Socioecon Plann Sci 2000,34(2):85–99. 10.1016/S0038-0121(99)00020-8 


6. Danneels E, Kleinschmidt EJ: Product innovativeness from the firm’s perspective. J Prod Innov Manag 2001,18(6):357–374. 10.1016/S0737-6782(01)00109-6 


Appendix A: Tables and Figures
NPV of Dog Park, including intangibles quantified using formula XYZ

Project:		Year 0	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5	Year 6	Year 7	Year 8	Year 9	Year 10	Totals
Education
Required rate of return	0.15
Outflows		-50,000.00	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,966.48	-6,389.31	-69,087.63
Inflows		72,000.00	82,800.00	86,940.00	91,287.00	95,851.35	100,643.92	105,676.11	110,959.92	116,507.91	122,333.31	128,449.98	1,041,449.50
Net inflows		72,000.00	82,800.00	86,940.00	91,287.00	95,851.35	100,643.92	105,676.11	110,959.92	116,507.91	122,333.31	128,449.98	1,041,449.50
NPV	145,854.28												972,361.87