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You have recently joined a large UK-based company as a project manager, reporting into Rich Coles, Transformation and Projects Director in the Office of the CEO.

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Rich has just got an email from the CEO with an urgent brief and has asked you to lead the project.  

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"Well, I told you it would be a case of hitting the ground running and now it's time to put all your project management training and skills to practise!  We need to get a project set up for the CEO asap for a senior leadership conference in 3 months time.  Here's what he sent me:

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“Now we’ve completed the merger successfully, I want to bring together the senior leaders from the combined business together as soon as possible so we can really start building a strong, unified company culture and fostering connections among our teams.

 

As such, I want us to hold a 3-day leadership conference here in London within the next 3 months.  We're looking at around 50 attendees, all at VP level and above, coming from our offices in the US, Australia, UK, and Switzerland, so everyone needs to have arrived on Monday and stay until Friday so we’ve got 3 full days to play with on Tuesday through to Thursday.

 

Additionally, I want us to showcase and celebrate the achievements of the past year at the respective businesses, communicate our strategic growth plans for the next three years, and provide an opportunity for wider leadership training for our senior executives. 

 

There should be plenty of opportunities for networking and getting to know each other, both during the day and through evening events. To keep the energy high, we want inspiring guest speakers each day and an equally inspiring venue.

 

I’ll leave it with you to find an events agency to handle the venue and attendee logistics efficiently – and it needs to be a damn site better than the last agency that totally messed up.

 

Given it’s only 3 months away, you’ll need to get moving on it ASAP and it’s one of my top priorities as new CEO to really make an impact on the leadership of the business. I’m looking to brief my senior exec team on it at our next meeting in 10 days so they can cascade it to their reports, so come back to me within the next 7 days with your outline plan and proposals.

 

Budget wise, we have set aside £200k for this conference, so please work within this budget while ensuring we provide a high-quality experience for all our attendees and let me know if any issues.  Given timings are tight, I’m happy to secure additional funds rather than compromise the event as it’s critical this conference a resounding success.

 

I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”

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When you’re ready, let's get it logged in our PPM tool and we'll get you set up with a project space to manage it from. Here's the link to submit a new project request.

 

We've only got three months before the event, so it’s going to be tight.  I’m pretty concerned about the budget given it could be hard to secure things without paying over the odds.  And I know in our side of business, lots of people usually take holiday at that time of year.  I’ve got a check-in with the CEO in a week so need something to update him on and at the appropriate level for him.  We won’t be showing him all the details, but I’ll want to go through these see the rigour in your thinking and an appropriate application of all that project management training you have been doing.  So for starters, by next week I'd like a project charter, first pass of a timeplan, list of risks, an outline budget and a project dashboard with the summary status report I can show to the CEO given he now asks to see all projects in Smartsheet."

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SCENARIO NOTES

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Make any necessary assumptions and have fun.  There are no right or wrong answers - this is simply a chance to flesh out a project using the kind of PPM tool you should expect use at any organisation that takes its project management seriously.  Please note no-one else will have access to your workspace beyond the team at Prodactive.

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The info you need to submit for your project request is in effect your project charter.  Click on the link to see the information you will need to include - so you'll want to work through this before submitting your project request.

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IMPORTANT NOTE: you will need to log into Smartsheet on a computer to view your project assets - not on a mobile device or tablet

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If possible and there's sufficient interest, we will run an online session to discuss the scenario and your findings.

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WHAT TO EXPECT​

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Here's an overview video of the project set-up you will receive once you have submitted your project: