Case Study I - Week 2- Appoint the Project Team

With more than 10 years publishing experience, Clear text publisher is considered one of the most successful new venture publishing companies in the market today. CEO Michel Stetson set up the company in 1995 with the intension of taking successful e-book and re-publishing them in physical hard copy format. By creating strict criteria for the selection of books to republish, Michel has been able to publish, market and sell a number of top sellers, making ClearText an extremely profitable business venture.

For the first seven years ClearText publishing has dominated the market and built a strong publishing brand name, however in the last 3 years a new competitor "publish offline" has entered the market and poached some of our key accounts by offering out authors higher royalty percentage on book sales. In response we have forced to increase our author royalties also, resulting in a reduced profit margin.

At a ClearText board meeting held earlier this year, I presented a plan a bid to purchase the Publish Offline company. The board agreed that, if successful the bid would enable ClearText to regain its lost customers and acquire new customers from its competitor's stable of authors. It would also enable us to reduce our Canterbury Institute of Management (CIM) MBIS403 - Project and Change Management in ICT author royalties to their original margin, restoring company profit level to their original level as well. ClearText subsequently made a bid to the shareholders of Publish Offline and after three months of negotiation, our two companies have signed a deal for acquisition.

We have established formal project to merge both companies under ClearText brand. The success of this merge is critical to ClearText ongoing business. It's the two companies are not merged seamlessly and without major disruption, then ClearText may not achieve the business benefits it plans on and fail to increase company profit. Because this project is so crucial to the ClearText business, I have established a project board of key ClearText shareholders and created a comprehensive job description for the recruitment of a senior project manager to take on this initiative.

This job description covers the

: Purpose of the project manager's role within the project

project manager's day to day responsibilities.

Organizational structure of the project and the project manager's reporting lines

Lines of communication between the project manager and other key project staff

Skill, experience, qualification and personal attributes required by this role

Key performance criteria for success in this role

General working environment, salary package and special working conditions

Explain each task in detail.

1. What are the key responsibilities of the newly appointed Project manager?

2. What type of management skills and competencies Project manager should have?

3. What type of educational and industry qualifications this project manager should have?

4. What type of personality project manager should have?

5. What are the key performance criteria's used to determine the success of this role