Project has staffing crisis mid-project. Project will lose up to 3 staff members and be unable to hire for 2 weeks. Senior management expects you to release a new printer which will upstage the competitor's expected new printer announcement. The target schedule is shortened to allow you to ramp up manufacturing and marketing soon enough to pre-empt the competitor announcement with an announcement of your own. The budget will support a cost structure that permits a profit margin which is slightly better than the current printer's margin. Your own analysis of the work required, and subsequent work breakdown structure has led to you conclude that these targets are difficult but achievable. Market intelligence gathered on the competitor’s plans is considered reliable, so the target specs for your new printer, required to upstage your competitor’s new printer, are reasonably well defined/understood, and expected to remain stable throughout the project. Comparatively, you are pleased that your project is reasonably staffed because other Project Managers are struggling to complete their work with limited resources.

After playing the simulation, students will generate a short debrief summary that responds the following assignment questions:

1. What’s different about the project context in this scenario?

2. In this scenario, how have causal relationships been affected or changed? Why have they changed?

3. What strategies did you use to deal with this scenario? What worked? What didn’t? Were you able to complete the project successfully?

4. Having dealt now with different project management advice? If so, how?