PRINCE2 Business Assignment

RETAKE ASSIGNMENT BB7018 - CASE STUDY

Date Set: Retake period 2021

Date Due: You must upload an electronic copy to Canvas by 5th of May 2021 by 5pm.

Assignment: Individual Retake Coursework 100%

You have been employed as a Consultant by Kingston University London to organise a Gala Dinner to celebrate the start of the academic year. The event will take place on Friday 24th September 2021 and it is open to all members of staff employed by Kingston University. You are to organise all aspects of the event including, booking the entertainment, advertising and ticketing. The client requirement is to break even and make profit by delivering a successful event.

Prepare a Business Case (1500 words +/- 10%), Project Plan report (1500 words +/- 10%) and Risk Register following PRINCE2 Methodology to present to your client. This is the “who, why, and what” part of the project. It defines all major aspects of the project and forms the basis for its planning and management and also the assessment of overall success. Remember that the quality offered and overall net profit will convince your client to buy your idea.

Notes:

· You need to define when the project will start. You may select the start date.

· Ticket price you offer is entirely up to you, but ticket price per person would never been more than £45 per person. This has to cover your costs and make the desired profit if no other income channels are available.

· Assume that the venue has max capacity of 300 people. Base case scenario for the event is predicted to be 70% of its capacity, best case is fully booked, worse case is only 30%.

· Any costs need to be justified. You may research costs from the Internet, but ensure that you reference where you got them from in your report.

· You may determine the venue where the Gala Dinner will be held. If you cannot find a cost for hiring a venue, assume that it will cost £3,500. This only includes the hiring of the building and does not include, for example, the beverages, food and music costs.

· You can assume that the venue is available for you on Friday 24th September 2021. Do not need to contact the venue directly.

· You may have access to the venue from 5:00am on Friday 24th September 2021 to 12pm on Saturday 25th September 2021 to set up and take down the event (these activities have to be considered in your project plan).

· Make sure the things you offer (promotion channels, entertainment during the event (e.g. live music), quality of food and beverage, reflects the standards of a Gala Dinner.

· You must break even and make profit.

· You do not have an initial budget. This is a bottom up approach to budgeting and you have to identify and decompose each activity into a Work Breakdown Structure, in order to identify the resources needed, activities duration and their cost.

· This is a time sensitive project rather than resource sensitive. Allocate more resources is needed to hit the deadline! However, you will still to make money at the end.

BUSINESS CASE GUIDELINE:

· Clearly define the reasons for undertaking the project and SMART objectives to be achieved

· Consider Business options of do nothing (do not do the project), do the minimum (the minimum products/activities required to break even), do something (following your planned solution).

· Expected benefits and dis-benefits

· Timescale and Costs (from project plan)

· Investment Appraisal based on base case (70%), best case (100%), and worse case (30%) scenario

· Consider Major Risks and Risk management strategy: identify, assess, plan, implement and communicate risks (use the Risk Register provided).

PROJECT PLAN GUIDELINE:

· Complete ALL parts of the planning document and conclude it by producing the following:

· Produce a Product Breakdown Structure (PBS), which is the ‘what’ of the project

· Produce a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), which is the ‘how’ of the project

· Input all the WBS activities into a Gantt Chart in Microsoft Project

· Produce a table of resources by allocating resources (e.g. material or man hours) to each activity in the Gantt Chart

· Produce an Activity Network by allocating predecessors into the Gantt Chart

· Identify the Critical Path for the project

· For WBS aim at listing a minimum of 30 tasks. Remember that tasks and category headings are different. A category heading, for example, is ‘Marketing’, whereas a task underneath this category heading may be to ‘Print the invitations’. There is no maximum number of tasks and you must illustrate the breakdown with a tree diagram. The breakdown should have a clear logical basis, although technical details may vary. Create your own category heading names as required and remember that there can never be only one right way for a project of this nature, as long as you justify your choice. Explain what basis you use to create the categories and tasks. You must make sure that the tasks are broken down in detail. For example, you would NOT have a task called ‘Invitations’, this should be broken down into the tasks to make sure the invitations have been sent out, for example, ‘Design Invitations’, ‘Create Invitations’, ‘Print Invitations’ and ‘Distribute Invitations’. The work breakdown structure diagram does not count towards the word count, but any assumptions you state will count towards the word count. For example, you may have a category heading called ‘Marketing’ and your assumption will detail how you have approached the students union to help you market the event and recruit student volunteers.

· Category Headings might be but not restricted to: Market Research (venue, suppliers, equipment, menu, etc) – Marketing (advertising and ticketing) – Human Resources (staff) – Operation (during and after event) – Closing (sign off and payments).

· The breakdown structure will not be included into the world count and has to be placed in the appendix.

Checklist – things you may forget about:

• Who are the key resources involved and how much they will cost?

• Where is the venue going to be? If outside have you thought about bad weather and mitigation of this risk (e.g. insurance)?

• What transport and accommodation arrangements do you need to make?

• How much food/drinks to order? (e.g. 1 bottle of wine gives you 6 glasses). Think about this as it will make an impact on budget.

• What are the event details?

• What are the risks for the project?

• Have you created a schedule for the day as well as before the event runs?

• Have you cleaned up after the event and returned any hired items?

This should be delivered in an essay style and should be no more than 3,000 words (+/-10%). The Risk Register, PBD, WBS, Gantt Chart, Table of Resources, Activity Network and Critical Path do not count towards the word count.

RECOMMENDED READING:

[1] Biggs, D. 2010. Management Consulting – A guide for students. Cengage Learning EMEA, Hampshire, United Kingdom.

[2] Davis, K. [Compiler]. 2014. Project Management (2nd edition). Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United Kingdom.

[3] Johnson, G., Scholes, K., Whittington, R. 2006. Exploring Corporate Strategy (7th edition). Prentice Hall. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United Kingdom

[4] Johnson, G., Scholes, K., Whittington, R., Angwin, D., Regner, P. 2017. Fundamentals of Strategy (3rd edition). Prentice Hall. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United Kingdom

[5] Koster, K. 2010. International Project Management. SAGE Publications Ltd.

[6] Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Harris, L.C., Piercy, N. 2017. Principles of Marketing (7th edition). Pearson Education Limited, Harlow, United Kingdom.

[7] Managing Successful Project with PRINCE2. 2017. AXELOS Limited, TSO.