DOCUMENT SERIES PROJECT

Percentage Weight of Final Grade: 10-20%

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Write for a specific purpose and audience

Create various forms of business correspondence and documents

Develop effective business correspondence writing style, paying particular attention to

concision (i.e., avoiding wordiness), paragraph construction, and tone

ASSIGNMENT

Choose one of the following scenarios, and produce the requested documents for one scenario only.

Each scenario asks you to prepare a range of documents. Students are responsible for determining

the appropriate genre (email, memo, business letter, etc.) as well as the content of those documents.

SCENARIO 1

You are a district manager at Omni Shop, a large retail chain that sells everything from candy to

expensive electronics (similar to Target or Walmart). You personally oversee 10 stores in the South

Florida area, and are responsible for reporting on the overall operation of these stores to your

regional manager, Faith McCormick, who oversees about 100 stores in the southeastern US. You are

one of 10 district managers who visit the brick-and-mortar stores, diagnose and troubleshoot issues

of waste and safety, and report your findings to her. On any given day, then, you have about 10% of

her attention, unless there is an important issue.

Recently, your company has begun hiring dedicated sales people for the Body Care Improvement

(BCI) aisle in all stores nationwide. BCI products (such as vitamins and protein powders) represent

extremely high profit margins, but recent customer surveys show many shoppers will often leave

the aisle overwhelmed and confused by the variety of options. Similar to the specialists you hire

in electronics or the pharmacy, BCI Specialists are expected to be highly knowledgeable in their

product area and to stay in their designated aisle in order to help answer customer questions.

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Steve Reece, who oversees the entire BCI business unit at your company, has told you that pilot

programs have demonstrated that a dedicated specialist can increase BCI sales by as much as

500%.

Unfortunately, many store managers notice the BCI Specialist walking their aisle and mistake

them for an employee who is doing nothing. These store managers have been trained to

spot underutilized employees and make sure they have something to do. As a consequence,

BCI specialists are often not in their aisle when customers have questions, and are instead

stocking shelves or working cash registers. BCI Specialists are hourly employees and do not

have the power to challenge a store manager. You have spoken to some of your store managers,

all of whom should have received training from Steve Reece about the BCI Specialist's

responsibilities, but do not seem to know what the BCI Specialist role is or what they are

supposed to do.

DELIVERABLES

Based on the scenario above, your deliverables will be the following documents:

Document to Faith, your Regional Manager, explaining the issue

Document to the managers at your 10 locations, clarifying the BCI Specialist role

Document to Steve, Director of the BCI business unit, explaining the issue and asking for

clarification about what managers have been told about the BCI Specialist role

SCENARIO 2

You are the technical manager of a large Internet design firm (100+ employees). One of your

primary responsibilities is to manage a team of developers. Your unit's primary goal is to build

and deliver custom web applications and to update client websites. Due to the increase of

information delivery via company intranets, your company has grown has grown considerably.

About 8 months ago you hired a small start-up company, MaintainU, to perform routine

maintenance for clients' websites because you needed to focus more attention on the custom

applications. MaintainU does not interact with your clients and they work as sub-contractors

through your company. Your clients are not aware of this move and for now, you and Nathan

Elder, your company president, want to keep it this way.

The last several months you have had problems with MaintainU not paying attention to version

dates. They have, on several occasions, made changes requested by clients, but they also

uploaded old pages to the site. Having dealt with a number of complaints, the most recent two

weeks ago, you had a long conversation with Jason Hughes, the president of MaintainU, that

mistakes are not acceptable.

Now, this morning, you receive an angry call from a client, Sheila Links at Gateway Industries,

because an executive that was fired two months ago has been added back to the executive page.

Gateway Industries was one of the first clients your firm ever signed. While the client is on the

phone, the mistake is corrected, and you end up setting up a meeting for lunch next week.

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For the first 6 months or so, the relationship with MaintainU was great. At this point, you're

uncertain if you want to continue the relationship, but at the same time, you cannot afford to

bring maintenance work back in-house. Apparently, the phone call to Jason wasn't enough.

DELIVERABLES

Based on the scenario above, your deliverables will be the following documents:

Document to the client, Gateway Industries

Document to MaintainU

Document to the president, who is a micro-manager and likes to know everything that is

going on

SCENARIO 3

You are a facilities project manager for Shop 'N' Leave, a national chain of convenience stores.

You oversee the construction of new stores and coordinate between your facility designers and

architects, the construction contractors, and the various state and local governments of each

location. All of your stores require multiple rows of large freezers and refrigerators for products

like beverages and ice cream. For each new location, your facility designers are responsible

for determining the best way to dispose of the condensation produced by this equipment in

a manner that complies with state and federal regulations for wastewater. Because the water

produced by these units may contain food waste (say, from broken or spilled bottles) as well as

cleaning chemicals, the water is usually routed to an industrial wastewater system, rather than

the systems for human sewage or stormwater.

Unfortunately, your new location in Dunedin, FL has been denied a permit to use the industrial

wastewater system. Anthony Clemens, the official responsible for permitting indicated that

refrigerator condensation is "clear water" and therefore should be routed into the stormwater

drainage system. You immediately understand the mistake: the official assumes this

condensation is the same as that produced by their home refrigerator or air conditioner. It is

not.

Compounding the problem, federal EPA guidelines strictly prohibit businesses from dumping

contaminated water into stormwater drainage systems, and your company could be fined tens

of thousands of dollars for non-compliance. But if you use the city's industrial wastewater

system without a permit, your Dunedin location could be fined or shut down completely. You

have already commissioned a third-party firm to test the condensation from your refrigeration

units, and they confirmed independently that the water is in fact in violation of EPA standards

for stormwater.

DELIVERABLES:

Document to Anthony Clemens, Director of Public Works and Utilities for the City of

Dunedin, who has previously denied your permit the use the city's industrial wastewater

system, officially asking for the decision to be reconsidered.

Document to Sarah Johansen, your facilities designer explaining that the necessary permits

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have been denied. You are working on the problem but the current building plans have not

been approved and may require substantial revision.

Document to your direct superior, Vice President of Facilities, Anita Bryer, detailing the

issue and its potential impact on the progress of the Dunedin location.

Pre-Writing:Perform a PAD analysis (Purpose, Audience, and Design) of your chosen correspondence by answering the following questions:

• What's your purpose? More than just the stated purpose? What's the goal, the desired outcome?
• Who's your audience? More than just a name, what's their stake in the situation? How are they disposed toward your correspondence? Are they an internal or external audience? What's the power dynamic between you? What level of formality do they expect? What tone is appropriate?
• What design will be most effective? Think about genre (i.e., letter, email, or memo). What genre is most appropriate. Think about style and format and length. Think about structure and organization. Consider the expectation of your audience and the purpose of the correspondence.

PART II

Drafting:After you have done your PAD analysis, draft the correspondence and submit it here, along with your PAD analysis.