Problem Management Short Report

Write a short report illustrating an example of a project undertaken by a company, municipality, or non-profit organization demonstrating how this project links to the organization’s mission, vision, and values. If possible, show the numerical rationale (NPV, IRR, Payback Period) used as a rationale.

 

How this will be graded:

Structure, Organization, Ease of reading, Grammar: 2 Points

• Did you write this to be easy to read?  For example, have you avoided huge blocks of text with no headers? Did you use (sparingly but where needed) highlighting (bold, underline, italic text)?
• Did you follow the structure of the sample Assignment 1?
• Did you follow the advice given in the lectures and From Your Instructor about the format?
• Did you follow rules of English grammar, spelling, and syntax?  Did you fix errors pointed out via Word’s editing capabilities (e.g. squiggly blue or red underlined text)?

Content: 7 Points

• Did you find an interesting project?  Did it come across that you yourself seemed interested in the project?
• Did you inform the reader about the project so that you could discuss it intelligently with someone else?
• Did you link the project to the organization’s mission, vision, and values?
• Did you make assertions, such as “this project was a success”, or “this project is used as an example a to how NOT to run a project”.
• Did you provide numbers – percentages, monetary amounts, resources used, etc., to make their point?  In particular, did you tie into the course content regarding NPV, IRR, Payback Period as suggested?  NOTE: If your project has intangible or hard-to-measure benefits (saving lives, protecting the environment, reducing hunger) you need to talk to that aspect and indicate why you cannot provide these financial figures.

References and resources: 1 Point

• Did you provide at least 2 references to a business journal or scholarly source to make a connection to the principles of mission, vision, values, benefits realization, charter creation, or other project, program, or portfolio concept?

Other things to consider:

• Did you add value from your own professional and/or personal experience
• Did you make appropriate use of figures and tables in an appendix?  Don’t substitute quantity for quality here – one good, relevant, and meaningful small table is worth 100 randomly inserted graphs and charts.

Below are example files, not necessarily even the highest-scoring assignments, made available to you so you can see the approximate length, scope and appearance of successful submissions from the recent past. Use them for those purposes only.

There is no specified length minimum or maximum, however to express this properly with enough background and to avoid writing a small novel, best practice seems to be about 4-5 pages of double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font text. If you have many  or larger supporting tables, figures, etc., you can include them as an Appendix.