The major project

Ross Woods, with thanks to Nιck Rαndαll

Part One: Develop a project proposal

Develop a project proposal that addresses a core strategic issue or opportunity in a way that would improve your organization. Your proposal must directly support your organization’s overarching strategic plan. Your project proposal must include:

A clear, simple, compelling definition of the need, problem or opportunity.
A clear, simple, compelling statement of your solution or response.
A plan and rationale for strategic change.
An assessment of significant risks.
A structural statement to the effect that it will function as a separate business unit, of which you will be the manager.
An operational plan for your project:

It must demonstrate feasibility.
It must include a detailed financial plan with firm estimates of costs.
It must include other operational information (timeline, critical path, cost schedule, etc.) We recommend you include a Gantt chart.

A strategy to inculcate innovation into your organizational culture.
A convincing business case with a clear dollar value. This may be savings of current expenses, increased income over current revenues, or risk mitigation with a dollar value of the risk and its probability of occurring.
Business ratios that you will monitor during implementation.
A plan for coaching your staff through the changes as part of your change management.

About your project proposal

Your senior management will need to approve your project, including any expenditure. Consequently, they need to see a convincing cost-benefit business case.
Back up what you say with enough concrete, well-researched information.
Present information in a way that is easy to understand for non-specialists.
Consult your senior management for comment early in the process. However, do not waste their time or get them to plan the project plan for you.
Some shortcuts do not comprise suitable projects:
1. Incremental development with no intentional strategic change.
2. A simple across-the-board budget trim.
3. A simple staff reduction (e.g. sack people, cut hours of casual staff).
You must ensure that your approach is sound. If it invovles significant theoretical concerns, you must include a more detailed written section on it. A critical review or an annotated bibliography may be appropriate.
Write it up as a draft following the guidelines above. Later on, use any comments or insights from the presentation feedback to improve your draft.

Part two: Project presentation

Give a half-hour presentation to gain approval for your plan. Your listeners will be other members of the class, your senior management, and your lecturers.

Engage your listeners and speak persuasively.
Use handouts of no more than two pages and suitable visual aids (e.g. good PowerPoint presentations).
Do not use gimmicks.
Close with a clear challenge to accept your project.
After your presentation, answer any questions.

Part three: Implement the project

As manager in charge, implement your project. As you go, keep records of what you do and what you learn.

You will probably need to adjust the plan on the way, because the operating context might change or you might encounter factors that you could not have anticipated during planning. This doesn’t mean that your plan has failed. It usually means that you have learned something new and need to adjust. Make changes to the project, and get approval as necessary.

If your project isn’t finished by the end of the semester you can apply for an extension of one semester. You will have to make a convincing business case, showing that the project is making sound progress and is worth any extra investment of time and resources.

You need to bring the project to a satisfying close. This often means that it needs to be fairly stable and in a good position to continue after the end of the project.

Part four: Review and evaluate the project

Review and evaluate implementation and success.
Do the financial acquittal.
Compile your portfolio of documents.
What did I learn about myself?

About the final format for graduate students

The advantages of a formal written form are:

Writing helps you develop your thoughts, especially the details.
It’s a reasonable expectation at graduate level.
The report can be useful elsewhere in your organization.
It can be a stepping stone for future students to develop good projects too.
It evidences what you have learnt as a pathway to further study, if relevant.

It needs to be clear enough to demonstrate what you tried to do and why, and what you learned from it. There is no specified length as long as you meet all requirements.

It need not be an unreasonable amount of extra work. The introduction and project methodology sections will be a tidied-up versions of your proposal and your routine reporting.

Make three copies:

One for the institution
One for your senior management
One for yourself.

Final format: Outline

The outline comprises the preliminaries, the main body of the text, and the final materials.

The preliminaries appear at the beginning of the report but are actually written last of all. They comprise:

The title page. In most cases, the project is done inside a business and should be marked Confidential. If you did the project as part of your paid work time, your employer will own the copyright, so you should include a copyright notice assigning copyright to your employer.
Lists of tables, maps, graphs, diagrams or abbreviations (as appropriate). If you have more than one list and they are short enough, you can put them on the same page.
Table of contents

The main body of of text comprises the following parts:

Chapter 1: Introduction	Explain the need for the project, the purpose or problem, assumptions, definitions, etc. Keep it fairly brief.
Chapter 2: Theory section (if necessary)
Chapter 3: Project methodology	Give the details of your project plan and describe the implementation. As a rule of thumb, it needs to be clear enough for someone else to do your project.
Chapter 4: Project outcomes	You need to state what the project achieved and give your evaluation of the approach. It is your opportunity to state any specific learning.
Chapter 5: Implications	This is the place to explore any interesting wider implications. It might be the most important part of all, especially in a large organization. But it’s optional because not all projects have enough implications to make a separate section.
Chapter 6. Conclusion	The conclusion reviews briefly what you have done, what you have found, and its general implications.
Appendices (If needed)	This is the place for anything unexciting that you need to include but would distract your readers if put into the text. Appendices are placed before the bibliography, because they might include references to sources that need to be included in the bibliography. Appendices are optional because you might not need them.
Bibliography (If needed)	You’ll need a bibliography for details of any books, journal articles, formal interviews, website materials, and unpublished materials.