EPM5600 Principles of Project Management
SEMESTER 3 Tri 2018
PMP ASSIGNMENT – BREIF FOR STAGE 1
BACKGROUND
The Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) is a national body that represents the interests of Project Management as a profession across all sectors and disciplines. Its focus is on maintaining the professional reputation of Project Management as a philosophy, provides useful information to its members, runs various training courses and upholds industry recognised accreditation standards.
In October 2018, AIPM plans to hold their first event as part of the National Conference to promote Information Technology (IT) professionals and does not have the in-house capacity or expertise to coordinate such an event. As the governing body for Project Management, AIPM acknowledges that this event needs to be meticulously planned and delivered to the highest standard possible.
PROJECT
Assume that your group has been appointed to provide Project Management services to Australian Institute of Project Management (AIPM) in relation to the Stage 1 - Due Diligence study for its first event. AIPM requests this due diligence report to be completed and submitted for review and approval by Monday Week 6 on or before 9.00 AM.
If the AIPM board agrees with and accepts the strategy, costs, timing and risk profile set out in the due diligence report. Your group will be commissioned for Stage 2 – Project Delivery. This will take place in Stage 2 and will include a variety of tasks including, but not limited to, setting the event delivery framework and preparing a Project Management Plan (PMP). A detailed brief will be released for Stage 2 at a later date.
This brief for Stage 1 – Due Diligence exercise provides the Project Management group with a more detailed understanding of AIPM’s business operations and project objectives for the proposed National Conference for IT Professionals.
REQUIREMENTS OF THE DUE DILIGENCE REPORT
AIPM expects to receive a concise due diligence report which as a minimum covers the following areas:
• Marketing strategies to be adopted leading up to the event.
• Advice on the optimum venue, format, duration, number of speakers and broad mud-map of the sessions.
• Timing associated with the planning, delivery and post implementation review of the event.
• Risks to be considered and the provision of a detailed risk matrix and how to manage.
• Advice on potential sponsorship arrangements and cost structuring for the event in terms of advertising packages, ticket pricing and offers for international delegates.
• Costs associated with running the event and the provision of a cash-flow which links to the project programme. Payment terms with various suppliers should be considered.
• A summary methodology describing how your group will manage the detailed planning and delivery of the event if the board decides to proceed. This will be further developed and will form the basis of the PMP in the Stage 2 – Project Delivery exercise.
This due diligence exercise and report should be focused on AIPM’s corporate objectives and project requirements in terms of key satisfaction criteria. However, in order to properly scope the works and produce an appropriate due diligence report, the following assumptions must be made:
• The event is targeted ti IT Professionals at both members and non-members, both individuals and corporations. AIPM currently has 11,000 individual members and 300 corporate members. Our assumption is broadly that 60% of attendees will be members and 40% will be non-members. It is expected that total number of 900 delegates to attend.
• AIPM is not looking to make a profit from this event. AIPM has sufficient cash reserves to fund the event, but is ultimately seeking full recovery of this through ticket sales and marketing income.
• The event should preferably be held in a large well know venue, in the central business district of; Melbourne, Sydney, Perth or Brisbane.
• We envisage the event to run for either 2 or 3 days. We expect that this will be either over Thursday, Friday and Saturday or Friday and Saturday.
• We envisage the presentation topics to all be relevant to Information Technology Project Management and primarily be case study based.
• Each day should be themed and the individual presentations on that day consistent with delivering an overall message.
• We envisage a minimum of 4 speakers per day with at least one of those being a key note speaker.
• We envisage there to be a gala dinner on the second night if the event is 3 days or on the first night if the event spans only 2 days.
• We expect there to be a specialist AV/VC consultant provided as part of the cost of the venue. Therefore the Project Manager only needs to consider the broad technological requirements and layout of the event, not the specifics.
AIPM’S BUSINESS OPERATIONS AND KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
AIPM is a national association that represents the interests of Project Management as a profession. We are essentially a not for profit organization that has both personal and corporate members, runs training and social events to promote and develop project management and sponsors various project management awards. We are widely known in the Project Management industry as the Australian version of the Project Management Institute.
We have been in operation for over 30 years and now have the scale and industry support to justify an event of this nature. Our primary focus is adding value to the attendees, ensuring that they come away with ideas and insight that is directly applicable to their day-to-day work and career development. Moreover, we want this event to be seen as positively contributing to the development of the Project Management industry, in terms of an opportunity to network with like minded individuals, access to industry leaders and leading edge project case studies and validation of the skills and expertise maintained by project managers, to combat market perceptions caused by the low barrier to entry.
We want the event to be dynamic, interesting and educational, combining good old fashioned project management principles with social media and cutting edge technology to promote the event and then facilitate an interactive experience for attendees.
We are seeking your guidance, support and knowledge as specialist consultants to ensure this event is the best it can possibly be. We hope this will be the first of many AIPM National celebration events.
SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
The submission date for your Stage 1 report is Monday Week 5 on or before 9 am and you will present your findings to the AIPM board on Week 6.
Reports received after Monday Week 6, 12 noon will be penalised.
VERBAL PRESENTATION
Twenty (20) minutes has been allocated for each group to present and this including question time to the assessment panel. At the conclusion of all presentations, brief comments will be made on the content and quality.
To assist in meeting these strict time constraints:
• Only 2 group members are required to present the key aspects of your report.
• Those who did not verbally present the Stage 1 report are required to be the presenters of the Stage 2 report.
ASSESSMENT
You will be assessed on both the written report and the verbal presentation. The report counts for approximately 2/3 of the total mark.
• Assessment related issues: Vinayaga Sarma, telephone 9919 4714. If not available, please leave a message or send an e-mail.
The project is primarily an academic exercise designed to expose students to realistic situations.