You and your group mates work for MyTree, a fictional social network platform. Each of you is a team lead for the following departments: Facilities, Finance, Information Technology (IT), and Marketing. MyTree's Director of Sustainability, Ann Ergee, is beginning an organizational transformation to improve the sustainability of the company's operations in several specific ways. To help manage this complex transition, Ann is delegating tasks to the most appropriate departments. In this way, she hopes to spread the responsibility throughout the company to make it a team effort and increase employee engagement. Plus, the staff seems to enjoy problem-solving challenges that accompany these endeavors.

This week, she will make each of you responsible for a different initiative. Through a few interactions over the next few days, you will respond to her request. First, you will construct a plan for executing the initiative. Next, all group mates will review and provide feedback on each other's plans.

For your Week 3 Scenarios, the theme is Project Management. Each team leader will find their scenario and prompt linked in the list below:

Facilities Team Prompt

Scenario description:

The Director of Sustainability, Ann Ergee, would like to start using MyTree as a platform to hold wider discussions about sustainable business practices. As such, she wants to begin using the MyTree facility to host conferences on the subject. A hiring committee has been formed to find an events coordinator, but she has tapped you, as the Facilities team lead, to organize the first of these conferences. It will take place in just over eight weeks, at the end of that week on a Friday. She would like a proposed project plan on her desk by the end of this week. She would like it in the form of a Gantt Chart. The project plan needs to organize all of the steps for preparing and setting up for the conference so that the stakeholder and resource needs are met.

Those stakeholders and their needs (in no particular order) are:

Event Emcee: The Marketing team lead, who has been tapped for the job of emceeing the event because they used to act in plays in high school. They want:

• A conference schedule
• Short bios for each of the visiting speakers, as well as for Ann as the Keynote speaker
• Very short descriptions for each of the presentations, as well as each of the breakout sessions (each visiting speaker is also leading a breakout session)
• Copies of all the slide-decks from all the visiting speakers, to be loaded onto the presenting computer ahead of time
• A lesson in how to work the microphones and the computer used to present the slide-decks, so that she can quickly help visiting speakers

Ann Ergee (Keynote speaker): The Director of Sustainability plans to speak for one hour during the morning of the conference. She does not yet have her presentation planned, but she knows she will need:

• A MyTree branded slide template from Marketing, as well as some guidance from Marketing on how she can best represent MyTree while presenting on her topic
• Lessons on the AV equipment
• Continuous updates on the health and details of this project, designed into the project plan itself (at what stages do you think her approval or feedback may be needed to make sure the project meets her standards?)
• Visiting Speakers:
  • Ann has limited her search for visiting speakers, for this first conference, to those she has solicited directly. Four have confirmed. She is waiting on the fifth. She has given you their contact information. She does not know what any of them will be presenting. They need:
  • An idea of how many will be in attendance to plan for their breakout sessions (this count will have to come from Marketing, who is both advertising and keeping track of RSVPs)
  • Conference schedules:
    • IT Department (AV techs)
      • IT will have to familiarize itself with new equipment to be able to support this activity. They also need time to choose and purchase the right equipment. They need:
        • Designated time to assess the needs of the auditorium and breakout rooms
        • A deadline to propose a budget for purchasing the equipment required for those rooms and this activity
        • At least one dress rehearsal with all the equipment, at least a week ahead of the end of the project
    • Marketing department:
      • Marketing has been tapped to advertise the conference on MyTree's website as well as through various other professional sustainability channels. They need:
        • A conference schedule
        • Medium-length bios for each of the visiting speakers and for the DoS
        • Professional profile pics of each of the visiting speakers (they already have Ann's)
      • They need the above as soon as possible, not just to advertise the conference but to communicate attendance to relevant stakeholders and also print the schedules for attendees to carry with them at the conference itself
• Catering, Catering will need:
  • An idea of how many people will be in attendance (retrieved from Marketing) at least one week before the project's end

The scope of the project is eight weeks, and so, the Gantt Chart comprising this project plan needs to be structured to take place entirely within that span. You must structure it in such a way that meets the needs of the previously defined stakeholders. In some cases, this planning may necessitate you "inventing" the amount of time something can or should take, but that is often a part of leadership. The most important thing is probably finding the correct order in the steps of completing the project so that everyone's needs can be met. For instance: the visiting writers need to supply their bios before either Marketing, or the emcee, can receive them, and Marketing needs their bios to advertise the conference.

Make a Gantt Chart as part of yourinitial post that shows how you would organize this project. Include a narrative with the Gantt Chart and the other post elements (see discussion prompt) explaining the progression of steps and why you have given certain steps the amount of time, or assigned the stakeholders, that you did.

Definition of Success:

Ann is impressed by your plan, as are the other stakeholders. The project begins with a clear sense of how it should proceed, as well as clear measures for assessing its health, so, when the inevitable occurs and things do not go entirely to plan, those administering the project have the tools necessary to react.

Outcome of Failure:

There are potential issues in either:

• How much time you have given a particular stakeholder to complete steps
• The order of steps you defined
• The clarity of the process you defined
• Or something else

Use the following instructions to create a Gantt Chart: http://www.adobe.com/express/create/chart

Navigate to the page corresponding to your department team, and read the instructions there for your initial post. Your initial post should contain three elements:

1. Your Gantt Chart plan in response to your department's instructions
2. A brief description about why you structured the plan the way you did
3. A brief reflection on what you have learned about the challenges and positive takeaways regarding project management from this task.