You are the director of external affairs for a national not-for-profit medical
research center that does research on diseases related to aging. The center s work
depends on funding from multiple sources, including the general public, individual
estates, and grants from corporations, foundations, and the federal government.
Your department prepares an annual report of the center s accomplishments and
financial status for the board of directors. It is mostly text with a few charts and tables,
all black and white, with a simple cover. It is voluminous and pretty dry reading. It is
inexpensive to produce other than the effort to pull together the content, which
requires time to request and expedite information from the center s other
departments.
At the last board meeting, the board members suggested the annual report be
upscaled into a document that could be used for marketing and promotional
purposes. They want you to mail the next annual report to the center s various
stakeholders, past donors, and targeted high-potential future donors. The board feels
that such a document is needed to get the center in the same league with other large
not-for-profit organizations with which it feels it competes for donations and funds.
The board feels that the annual report could be used to inform these stakeholders
about the advances the center is making in its research efforts and its strong fiscal
management for effectively using the funding and donations it receives.
You will need to produce a shorter, simpler, easy-to-read annual report that
shows the benefits of the center s research and the impact on people s lives. You will
include pictures from various hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities that are
using the results of the center s research. You also will include testimonials from
patients and families who have benefited from the center s research. The report must
be eye-catching. It needs to be multicolor, contain a lot of pictures and easy-tounderstand graphics, and be written in a style that can be understood by the average
adult potential donor.
This is a significant undertaking for your department, which includes three other
staff members. You will have to contract out some of the activities and may have to
travel to several medical facilities around the country to take photos and get
testimonials. You will also need to put the design, printing, and distribution out to bid
to various contractors to submit proposals and prices to you. You estimate that
approximately 5 million copies need to be printed and mailed.
It is now April 1. The board asks you to come to its next meeting on May 15 to
present a detailed plan, schedule, and budget for how you will complete the project.
The board wants the annual report in the mail by November 15, so potential donors
will receive it around the holiday season when they may be in a giving mood. The
center s fiscal year ends September 30, and its financial statementsshould be available
by October 15. However, the nonfinancial information for the report can start to be
pulled together right after the May 15 board meeting.
Fortunately, you are taking a project management course in the evenings at the
local university and see this as an opportunity to apply what you have been learning.
You know that this is a big project and that the board has high expectations. You want
to be sure you meet their expectations and get them to approve the budget that you
will need for this project. However, they will only do that if they are confident that you
have a detailed plan for how you will get it all done. You and your staff have six weeks
to prepare a plan to present to the board on May 15. If approved, you will have six
months, from May 15 to November 15, to implement the plan and complete the
project.
Your staff consists of Grace, a marketing specialist; Levi, a writer/editor; and
Lakysha, a staff assistant whose hobby is photography (she is going to college parttime in the evenings to earn a degree in photojournalism and has won several local
photography contests).
CASE QUESTIONS
You and your team need to prepare a plan to present to the board. You must:
1. Establish the project objective and make a list of your assumptions about the
project.
2. Develop a work breakdown structure.
3. Prepare a list of the specific activities that need to be performed to accomplish
the project objective
4. For each activity, assign the person who will be responsible.
5. Create a network diagram that shows the sequence and dependent
relationships of all the activities.
