Feasibility Proposal Report

Feasibility Proposal Report Assignment This assignment, worth 15% of your course grade, is due for 6:00pm, Tuesday, June 03/14.

General Information I will provide the outline of a scenario, for which you may invent any relevant details you wish. Within that scenario, you will create a report. That report will then become the basis for your next assignment, due the following week, the Revised Project Plan, also worth 15% of your course grade. Before undertaking this Feasibility Proposal Report assignment, you might wish to review Chapters 9, 11, and 12 of your textbook, and to at least skim the online items listed below. Given the intent of COMM 310, I would expect that this assignment will deal in some way with “technology”. Particularly if you do choose a topic related to IT (Information Technology), you might find it helpful to look at the software and systems development life cycle delineated by T. Drewry of the University of the West of England (Bristol), available May 12/14 at http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~tdrewry/Lifecycl.htm#TLC, Regardless of your topic however, you should look at Recommendation and Feasibility Reports at http://www.prismnet.com/~hcexres/textbook/feas.html. Within the context of that website, consider your Feasibility Proposal Report assignment to be a Feasibility Report. You can readily find a lot of online information about creating feasibility proposals and/or feasibility reports. Examples include https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060726100055AAaLjzS, http://answers.ask.com/Business/Management_and_HR/how_to_write_a_feasibility_report, and http://www.ehow.com/how_7928836_write-feasibility-proposal.html. If you read such material carefully, however, you will see that different people have different convictions about how to create the document, what it should contain, how long and how detailed it should be, how it should be organized, and so on. Clearly, there is no single, correct way to construct one—whatever you actually call it. Not surprisingly, then, my advice for “the real world” would be to conduct a CMAPP analysis to determine what you should actually be generating. Remember, by the way: once you have finished COM 310, you may choose never again to let the CMAPP model enter your consciousness. That’s fine; but, I would strongly urge you, in that case, to choose some other model that works, and use it. Don’t simply put all models aside and assume you can do better without one. Few people can. Contrary to many of the examples illustrated in some of the references above, for this assignment, you will be constructing a relatively brief feasibility study. See below for details.

Scenario The report that you create for this assignment will refer to a project that derives from this scenario. The project you choose might reflect an issue in your current job (see my Note on the next page) or be inspired by your course work. If neither of those proves fruitful, you may “invent”. You work as a consultant, either on your own or employed by a consulting firm—your choice. A former client has asked you to examine apparent system-related difficulties. (As mentioned, I would expect this to be some kind of technology-related issue.) You therefore conduct a brief feasibility study. Now, in a (standard business) letter of no more than three full pages, write the resulting feasibility proposal report for the client. Invent all necessary, relevant details. Since you will be using this feasibility proposal report for your next assignment, you should keep careful track of your research.

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Note: If your scenario is a “real” one at your workplace, your scenario will change accordingly; e.g., you will use a standard memo rather than a letter, you may not be a “consultant”, but an employee with a different job title, your “client” may be your manager, etc.

Specific Requirements—Assignment Particulars For this assignment, I am setting what I term written assignment particulars. Let me quote from page 4 of my Week 1 Posting:

Imagine the following scenario. As a consultant, you have a new client who contracts with you to create a business proposal. As part of your discussion of details, the client says that his company has just moved into a new building of which they are very proud. He gives you a flash drive containing a high-resolution colour photo of the building, and says that he wants you to use a grey-scale version of that photo as a watermark on every page of the proposal document. As you are finishing the proposal document, you realize that the grey-scale watermark on every page looks pretentious and unprofessional. You remove it, and, using the file from the flash drive, create cover page for the proposal, that includes a full colour, high-resolution picture of the client’s building. That is what you present to him. Admittedly, you might have a client who looks at this and says, “This is much better than what I had in mind. Thank you!” However, it is more likely that your client will look at your document, and say, “This is not what I contracted to pay you for. I said I wanted a grey-scale version of the photo as a watermark on every page. Obviously, you don’t care what the person who pays you wants; you just do what you want. I’m not accepting this; I’m certainly not paying you for it; and, I won’t hire you again; and, you can guess what kind of a recommendation I’ll give if anyone asks me about your sense of professionalism.” That, of course, is “real life”… And, for several of your assignments, I will introduce a “reflection” of the issue of “giving the client what the client wants”. Those assignments will specify certain details of content, form, and/or format, which I will label Particulars. They are not meant to be difficult, complicated, or unclear; nor do they necessarily represent the “best” options for the item involved. Rather, they are meant to reflect “what the client wants”—and to verify that you, as a professional communicator, are “paying attention”. The penalty for ignoring them becomes increasingly onerous: • for a first infraction, the automatic loss of 10% of the total available mark; • for a second infraction, the automatic loss of 15% of the total available mark; • for any further infraction, the automatic loss of 20% of the total available mark.

In “real life”, of course, you should proceed a bit differently. If you come to believe that following the client’s instructions will result in a poorer product, you would contact the client to present your case— politely and respectfully—and ask how the client now wants you to proceed. For the assignments in this course, however, you don’t have that option. Even if ask my permission not to adhere to an assignment’s Particulars, I will refuse—not out of stubbornness, but to see how you deal with “task limitations” that a client won’t modify; and, recall that in a sense, I’m the “client”—I’m paying with “marks”…

Here, then, are the five Written Assignment Particulars for this assignment. You will find reminders of them at the beginning of the Feasibility Proposal Report Grading Sheet, available on the course website.

Particulars 1. The assignment must be formatted as a standard business letter from you as consultant to your client. (If

your scenario is a “real” one at your workplace, the assignment must be formatted as a standard memo. See my Note at the top of this page.)

2. The assignment must not exceed four full pages. (I do not want any kind of assignment “cover page”.) 3. Because it is a letter (or a memo), do not follow APA style. Apart from the letterhead (or masthead) that

you create, your font should be 11- or 12-point, Garamond or Times New Roman, left-justified, single- space text. If you are using a letter, it should be standard block format. For details, see the file, Reading –

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Canadian Business Letter Formats.pdf, available just above the Week 1 segment on the course website and referred to in item 6.0 on page 3 of the Course Syllabus.

4. The issue involved must be realistic and practical, and sufficiently complex to allow for your Revised Project Plan assignment.

5. The following four headings must appear exactly as indicated and in the sequence shown. • Introduction • Recommendations • Analysis • Conclusion

Content For each of the headings just mentioned, you should include at least the content described below. a) Introduction: Provide a short synopsis of the situation, and the reason for your communication—to your

“client”, not to me. b) Recommendations: Briefly and concisely (in CMAPP terms), specify what you think would work and

why. Propose moving ahead to the next phase. Format and phrase the actual recommendations appropriately.

c) Analysis: Include an initial, general estimate of the costs (financial and other) you would foresee, contrasting them against the probable benefits. Include a provisional timeline.

d) Conclusion: Summarize very briefly and seek authorization to proceed.

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