Software development and construction are well under way and you are pleased with your plan to bring the expected budget at completion back down to under $19 million. You have been very busy with monitoring project progress and staying on top of all the new developments that seem to arise each day.

Later today you have a meeting scheduled with one of the public relations consultants from Ortega Associates, our public relations firm, to discuss the media strategy for communicating project progress to the public. The consultant has asked you to familiarize yourself at a high level with media strategies.

Reading: Public Involvement for Decision MakingDownload Public Involvement for Decision Making

You find several voicemails waiting for you when you arrive at your office. The first message is from Steffen Rasch, the reporter from the TechTown Tribune Times.

"Steffen Rasch calling from the Tribune Times. Based on your most recent project status report, it appears that the Cascada PREP Project has run into real trouble. Taxpayers are going to be furious about a 6% cost overrun exhausting the State's initial EDZ financing, not to mention almost a month of additional software development hassles. Will NEIT Capital Management ask for additional EDZ funding because of this mismanagement? I'm working on an article about this for tomorrow's paper, and would like to get you on the record with a response. I'm on deadline, so please call me as soon as possible."

The message is a surprise. How could Steffen Rasch know about the project status report? That document had been distributed to internal team members.

You play the second voicemail.

"This is Padma Rodriguez, from the Techtown Chamber of Commerce. I'm sitting here with James Thistle and we're looking at the front page of the recent project status report and I can't believe what I'm reading. It looks like the project may take an additional five weeks to complete! Do you have any idea what kind of impact that lengthy construction is going to have on your staff and the local businesses? The disruption is bad enough already. This continued impact staff on productivity will affect their annual bonuses and it could kill many of our small businesses.

Thistle and I are organizing a demonstration of the local business community and we're going to take this to the head of the Department of Health and the state legislature if necessary. It's an outrage this is happening and we've been kept in the dark."

You take a look at the executive summary that accompanied the project status reportit did contain some grim news:

Cascada Community Medical Center PREP Project Mid-Project Status Report

Summary

As of last Friday, the project completed its fifteenth week of work. There are several areas of concern that the team is working to address:

Based on earned value management calculations, the schedule for the project appears to be in significant danger. A schedule performance index calculation suggested that the project would take 30 weeks to complete, rather than the originally scoped 26 weeks. Team leads are working with Rambone to see what steps can be taken to pull the schedule back in.

The budget is also an area of risk. Cost variance calculations indicate that the project may cost 6% more than originally expected. Again, work is ongoing between the team leads and Rambone to investigate this issue and explore ways to rein in the project costs.

During the next month, development will slow as we increase our testing and user training for both the Patient Portal and the 3D printers. This is to be expected. The team will continue to emphasize the need to use change control processes to review and approve any potential changes to the project scope. One example of a problematic change was the addition of special WIC module that directly integrates with the state's system. This modification was not subjected to the change control process because it was considered to be part of an existing project feature rather than a completely new feature.

But you already made plans to bring the project back on track. Someone inside deliberately leaked the report, which had old information and was never intended for public consumption, to the Tribunereporter, Rodriguez, Thistle, and potentially other stakeholders.

Make and Support Your Decision

In response to the controversy that is brewing over the budget and schedule overruns, you decide to:

Call Rasch and Rodriquez and explain you need to discuss a response with key stakeholders, and request that they wait until you can provide solid answers.

Call Rasch and Rodriquez and explain that the project status report summary presented worst case scenarios and that you are confident that the Cascada PREP project will finish on time and on budget.

Organize a news briefing, to which Rasch and Rodriquez are invited, at which you explain that your project team and the main contractor, Rambone, are responding to project delays with a contingency plan that will ensure that the Cascada PREP project finishes on time and on budget.

What to Submit

Once you've made your selection, write an email to Victor Nguyen, NEIT Capital Management's Project Management Office Director, summarizing the situation and explaining your decision. Your email must clearly identify which option you chose, justify your choice, and address reasons why the other options are not the best choice.

After completing your email, click "SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT" on the right side of your screen and upload your a document containing the text of the email (please do not send the email).