PRINCIPLES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT’S REPORT MEMORANDUM To: Project Management Consultancy From: Chief Executive’s Office Subject: Project Management Improvement Strategy In light of your recent achievements assisting various organisations to improve their project management performance, we would like to engage your consultancy to help us improve the way we manage projects too. As you know, in recent years the Mawson Zoo has undertaken a larger number of projects of increasingly higher value. Yet despite our internal technical expertise and management capability, the number of projects delivered on time and within budget has declined. For this engagement, we would like your consultancy to present a professional ‘consultant’s proposal’ with recommendations for the implementation of modern project management principles and processes to improve project schedule and budget performance throughout the organisation. Your proposal will need to take into account current project management theory and make recommendations for implementation of concepts such as (note: these are only suggestions; you are free to adapt as desired): 1) Alignment of projects with corporate strategy; 2) Accountability and responsibility for projects; 3) Project-supporting organisational structure; 4) Standardisation of project methodologies across the organisation; 5) Integration of recognised project processes across the project lifecycle; 6) Project performance and success measurement; and/or 7) Continuous improvement of project practices. Your recommendations will need to be implemented in several stages, which you will need to outline within your proposal as a 1-page Staged Implementation Schedule. To support your discussion and recommendations, you may need to make assumptions regarding the Zoo’s existing project management methodologies and maturity. You must make these assumptions (if any) clear in the report. The required report structure shall be in accordance with the following structure: Title Page Table of Contents 1. Executive Summary (maximum 1 page) 2. Introduction (maximum 1 page) 3. Discussion with Recommendations (one topic per group member – pick from the topics listed above) 3.1. ……………… 3.2. ……………… 3.3. ……………… 3.4. ……………… 4. Staged Implementation Schedule (maximum 1 page) 5. Conclusion (maximum 1 page) 6. References Please also note the following requirements for your report: a) Each section must include the author of that section, the editor(s) if any, and the word count. b) Each of the sections listed above must start on a new page. c) Sections 3.1 to 3.4 must each be supported with in-text references that correspond with items in the master ‘References’ list. d) Recommendations for each of the discussion sections (i.e. sections 3.1 to 3.4) are to be included at the end of the respective sections. e) No appendices are required. We understand there may be many opportunities for our project management capability to be improved. We believe your contribution will be valuable and will lead to increased viability for the Zoo in the long-term. We look forward to your report and recommendations. Yours sincerely, Theodor Seuss Geisel Chief Executive Mawson Zoo