Development of new educational toys for 6-10 year olds

Development of new educational toys for 6-10 year olds

Order Instructions:

Course Project Part 1—Due Week 2
For Part 1 of the Course Project, assume you have been appointed project manager of a new project for your organization. Your first assignment is to create a scope statement and WBS for this project.

For this part of the Course Project, you select a project of your choosing. This selected project will be used in Project Part 1 and Project Part 2. I suggest you verify with your instructor the suitability of your selected project by the end of Week 1.

Select a project of personal interest. For example, select a project where you can identify realistic cost and scheduling concerns. Opening a small retail storefront or a franchise is one example. When selecting your project, keep in mind the goal of CP-1 is to create a scope statement and WBS. In Project Part 2, you will need to create a budget and schedule for this project. Choose something relatively straightforward. For example, simple start-ups, such as pizza or fast-food franchises, work well because information is readily available. It is preferred that you do NOT pick remodeling a house, but building a house or flipping a house is acceptable.

The CP-1 Project Proposal will be structured with the following sections.
• Cover page including assignment, project title, course, and student contact information
• Executive summary that summarizes the content from the entire document with quantifiable highlights, such as overall cost, duration, and so on
• Project scope statement describing the project
• Resource loaded WBS and schedule with proper grouping, indenting, and coding for approximately 25 to 40 line items

Submission Requirements
• The scope statement should be written following guidelines for writing a scope as found in the PMBOK® Guide in Chapter 5.
• The WBS should be created in MS Projects following standard indent and outdent practices used in WBS creation.
• The assignment should be submitted as two files: one MS Word file for the scope statement and one MS Project file containing the project WBS.

SAMPLE ANSWER

Project Part 1: Development of new educational toys for 6-10 year olds

Executive Summary

The selected project is about new product development for a toy manufacturer. The management of this organization wants to produce new toys – educational toys – for six to ten-year-old children. The company is introducing new products in order to increase its sales and revenue by 12% in the next 2 years; to sale its toy products to a totally new market segment which it has never sold to before, that is, kids aged 6-10, in the next 1 year; and to increase its share of the toy market by 5% over the next 2 years. As such, the outcome or deliverable of this project is educational toys for 6-10-year-old children. With regard to the budget, the company has set aside $33,146.99 toward the completion of this project. The management of this toy manufacturer expects the project to be complete within a period of 1 year from September 2015; hence the duration is 12 months.

Project Scope Statement

The project scope statement is a vital facet of any project. It is utilized as a written confirmation of the outcome the project would produce as well as the assumptions and constraints under which the project manager would work. Prior to the beginning of the project work, it is important that both the project team members and the organization – people who requested the project – agree to all the terms that are spelt out in the Scope Statement (Spalek, 2014). In this project, the following information is included in the Scope Statement:

Project scope description: this is basically a short description or summary of the project (Mesquida & Mas, 2014). This project would be carried out for a business organization that is engaged in the manufacturing and retailing of toys. At the moment, the organization has a range of toys for kids aged 3-5 years as well as for kids 12-15 years. This means that the company does not cater for the 6-11 year-old market segment. Of late, the company’s senior management has become more and more interested in making toy products for children aged 6-10 years. Therefore, this project entails the development of new educational toy products for the company and the target market for this product comprises children aged six to ten years. It is worth mentioning that the company is developing this new toy with the main objective of increasing its revenue by 12%.

Deliverables: these are basically the services, products, and/or outcomes that would be produced by the project (Mesquida & Mas, 2014). Given that this project entails developing new toy products for kids aged 6 through 10, the results that would be produced by this project are educational toys. The specific toys include toys which bring out the story teller in children such as storytelling toys, felt boards, and puppet theatres; toys that a child can dismantle and put back together such as puzzles and mazes; toys which require symbol use for instance, board games; and toys which promote team sports for instance, backyard water toys or badminton racquets and nets. Other educational toys relevant to 6-10 year olds would also be produced.

Project exclusion: these are the statements with regard to what the project would not produce or accomplish (Zwikael, 2010). In this project, what would not be produced are as follows: toys that are for younger kids aged less than 6 years, toys for older kids aged above 10 years, toys made using poor quality materials, and toys that are not educational. Constraints: these are listings of project limitations and are generally classified by resources, time frames, results, and technical or physical constraints. They are the restrictions limiting what could be achieved, when and how it could be achieved, and how much it could cost to attain it (Rajabi, 2012). For this project, one constraint is restricted budget since the $33,146.99 set aside for the project may not be sufficient enough. Another constraint is limited time frame. This project is to be completed with 1 year. However, this timeframe may not be adequate enough to carry out all the tasks of the project effectively and satisfactorily.

Assumptions: this is a listing of thoughts which are believed as being true but they have to be confirmed. They are statements regarding the way in which vague information would be addressed as the project is visualized, planned, and carried out (Mesquida & Mas, 2014). For this project, the assumptions include the following: the toy products made would be for both girls and boys in the 6-10 year-old age group; the new toys would be reasonably priced as price would not be too high or too low; and the toys should be manufactured within one facility. Project acceptance criteria: these are the conditions which have to be satisfied before the deliverables of the project are accepted (Reich & Yong, 2012). For this project, these conditions include: toys for kids aged 6 through 10; toys made using high-quality materials; toys that can be used for educational purposes, that is, educational toys; and toys that meet the relevant government laws, regulations, and standards.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Figure 1: Work Breakdown Structure for the new toy

As shown in Figure 1 above, every level of the Work Breakdown Structure is a level of detail that is created through decomposition, which enables work to be broken down into smaller components that are more manageable.

Schedule of the project

Gantt chart: Project will take place from September 2015 until September 2016

References

Mesquida, A., & Mas, A. (2014). A project management improvement program according to ISO/IEC 29110 and PMBOK®. Journal Of Software: Evolution & Process, 26(9), 846-854. doi:10.1002/smr.1665

Rajabi, M. A. (2012). Chapter 5: Project scope management (PMBOK Guide). Retrieved from http://www.marajabi.com/PMBOK/Chapter05.pdf

Reich, B. H., & Yong, W. (2012). Searching for knowledge in the pmbok guide. Project Management Journal, 37(2), 11-26.

Spalek, S. (2014). Finding a New Way to Increase Project Management Efficiency in Terms of Time Reduction. Engineering Economics, 25(5), 538-548. doi:10.5755/j01.ee.25.5.8419

Zwikael, O. (2010). The relative importance of the PMBOK® Guide’s nine Knowledge Areas during project planning. Project Management Journal, 40(4), 94-103.

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