Project Description

In this project, you will take on the role of a senior manager at a boutique design company. A leading smartphone maker has announced that it will award your company a contract to come up with a design for a next generation smartphone.

Your customer, whose smartphone has 45% of the market, has its own very creative talent and will be continually designing and manufacturing newer versions of its smartphone, but it will make this award to your company because it wants the benefits of a totally independent and innovative design.

This contract is a big win for your company to greatly enhance its reputation as an innovative idea factory. The company is so focused on making this a huge success that it has authorized internal funding to get you started immediately on project planning.

The project is called NextGen Smartphone.

Project Parameters

Many of the parameters for the NextGen Smartphone project are already established:

• Project objective: The project objective is to come up with a product design for a next generation smartphone with a design that delights the customer.
• Project manager: You are the project manager.
• Period of performance (POP): The period of performance (POP) is six months, from July 2018 through December 2018.
• Total fixed project resources: Your project budget is specified by the contract award. During the period of performance, you will have funding for five company employees to work full-time plus an additional $200K to use as needed. So the total budget is completely determined and it is in two different unitsstaff days and dollars. You will have a labor budget (that should not be converted to dollars) of five employees working full-time. Your company financial office uses 20 staff days per month, so your total labor budget is 20 x 5 staff x 6 months = 600 staff days. Your nonlabor budget is $200K. These are the total fixed project resources.
• Project team: Your five-person employee team consists of you and four talented and versatile product designers: Ben, Carla, Dan, and Elsa.
• Project deliverable: There is only one required project deliverable to the external customer, a NextGen Smartphone product design document, which will describe everything about the innovative smartphone: its physical specifications, its features, and its functionality (analogous to what you see online about a smartphone when you click on it to learn more about it), as well as how people will use it, and what makes this a next-generation design.
• The customer: You will have no contact with the customer during planning or any phase of the project. The customer wants you to be completely independent in coming up with your design.

Project Assignments

Over the next several weeks in this class, you will do the project planning for the six-month project, producing a number of planning documents.

These planning documents outline what you and your fictional team members (Ben, Carla, Dan, and Elsa) will do (and what you will do with the $200K) during the six-month POP. So when the contract is awarded, your team will be ready to start the execution phase of the project because all of the planning is completed. Note: You will not be responsible for actually building the final product. You are just developing the design document and creating a plan to execute that design.

Everyone is doing the same project in this course. So is there room for creativity? Yes!

The assignment guides and rubrics below outline what excellent deliverables should include. Now you should work on producing them.

Think about this. What activities will help to lead to an innovative design? How will you prepare for risks? How will you make the most effective use of your time and money?

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Steps

1. In the Project Manager section, list your name.
2. In the Date of Original SOW section, list the date.
3. Complete the Revision History table. In this table, enter the revision date, the name of the person who will do the revisions, the name of the person who will approve the revisions, and a description of each change.
4. Keep the Project Objective the same. You do not need to alter this section.
5. Keep the Period of Performance the same. You do not need to alter this section.
6. In the Major Activities and Expected Time Period section, list all the major activities that you must do to complete the project. Then assign an estimate for when your team will complete each of these activities.
7. In the Out of Scope Activities section, list all out of scope activites for this project.
8. In the Budget/Cost Estimates section, list cost estimates for all types of costs.
9. In the Schedule Overview section, list estimated project completion date, all major milestones with estimated dates of completion, and all external milestones with estimated dates of completion.
10. In the Impact of Late Delivery section, list all the ways in which the project will be affected if it is delivered late.
11. In the Deliverables and Acceptance Criteria section, list all major deliverables, as well as the criteria by which those deliverables will be accepted.
12. In the Measures of Success for Project section, list all the ways in which you intend to measure the project's success.
13. In the Assumptionssection, list all the assumptions that you have about the project.
14. In the Major Risks section, list all the major risks related to the project.
15. In the Stakeholder Register section, list all the stakeholders and their roles, as well as their major responsibility or contribution.

Project Objective: Come up with a product design for a next generation smartphone

Period of Performance: July 1 through Dec 31, 2018

Major Activities and Expected Time Period?

Out of Scope Activities?

Budget/Cost Estimates:

Cost Type

Amount

Labor hours?

External costs?

Labor (consultants, contract labor)?

Equipment, hardware or software?

List other costs such as travel & training?

Schedule Overview

Estimated Project Completion Date: 12/30/2018

Major Milestones?

External Milestones Affecting the Project?

Impact of Late Delivery?

Deliverables and Acceptance Criteria?

Measures of Success for Project?

Assumptions?

Major Risks?

Stakeholder Register?