Organizing an Evening Party

Name: Zhu Chuyan ID: 4546474

Executive Summary

• The student union of Coventry University decides to organize an evening party to celebrate the coming Art Festival on March 1^st.
• The project is aiming at planning some phases to conduct the evening party in order to reduce the risk and cost to the least.
• The project will start on January 21^st, which will last for one month. The estimated budget is £2000-£3000.

1, Introduction

The project definition phase lays the groundwork for obtaining information about the project and provides a shared understanding about its objectives, sponsorship, costs, benefits, timeframes, resources and mandate. (Toolbox, 2007) With a project, the executors can clearly see what the process they should follow and sum up the most effective and efficient way to achieve their goal.

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Owing to the coming of Art Festival of Coventry University, the school Student Union decides to start an evening party. The evening party can not only help the teachers and students relax after heavy work and tired study, it can also increase their sense of art.

This project is aiming at elaborating the essential steps of organizing the evening party and recording some precautions, which will greatly avoid project failure caused by the lack of proper planning. But this project will not contain where to find or design the item listed in table 1 and will not estimate the income from selling food and drinks. And it will not mention what are the exact days to get the requirements.

2, Project Scope: Project scope is the part of project planning that involves determining and documenting a list of specific project goals,deliverables, tasks, costs and deadlines. (SearchCIO, 2012) It can be defined as everything about a project. This project is going to define objectives, deliverables; plan the resources, schedules and milestones in detail; analyze the stakeholders and risks; and summarize and execute the project.

2.1 Project objectives: The objective of this project is to organize a successful evening party on March 1st 2013 to celebrate the Art Festival. The members of the student union would like to control the budget between £2000 and £3000. And they would like to regain most of the money through selling the £4 entrance tickets and food and drink.

2.2 Project deliverables: Deliverables can be anything. It can be a real object, a service, a piece of software and so on. They are anything the project can deliver to the stakeholders. In this project, the most important aim is to provide an evening party to the teachers, students and other relevant staffs. A stage (with stage lighting and 500 seats), audio equipments and clothes are also needed for the performers (students of University and some from Birmingham University). And decorations are needed to beautify the stage. Moreover, dissemination is necessary. So leaflets and playbills should be delivered to teachers and students before the party begins. The pattern of ticket should be given to the printing plant in time to ensure the tickets can be completed in time and sold one day before the evening party. Last but not the least, there is enough place in the meeting place for the food and drink distributors (who are volunteers of Coventry University) to sell the products.

2.3 Resources: It can be said that every project need resources like labor resources and objects. The estimated resources required for this project are stage, audio equipments, performers, clothes, leaflets, tickets, food and drink, decoration and food and drink suppliers. The budget of performers is zero because they are all students from university, who are voluntary to perform shows in the evening party. But they can enjoy the food and drink freely when they show their staff cards (the cards will be distributed to the performers when they enter the meeting place) and plus credits. As for the clothes, in some of the small-scale musical performances, they can wear their own clothes. So do the students from Birmingham University. That is to say, the cost of their clothes is not included in the budget. Furthermore, the food and drink distributors are students who apply for volunteers. There are a total of 12 people. They will be given £15 after their work as bonus. They can enjoy the food and drink freely, too. Table 1 will show the expected budget of each item.

(Table 1)

Expected income: Each ticket will cost £4. There are 500 seats. If 400-450 tickets are sold, there will be £1600-£1800 income. There will be another income from the food and drinks.

2.4 Stakeholder analysis: Stakeholders are individuals who either care about or have a vested interest in your project. They are the people who are actively involved with the work of the project or have something to either gain or lose as a result of the project. (Connecxion 2009) In this project, the stakeholders are:

â‘  Principal of Coventry University

â‘¡ Financial departments of Coventry University

â‘¢ Customer – end users

â‘£ Project team – planners and organizers

⑤ Food and drink suppliers

â‘¥ Printing plant

⑦ Stage supplier

Stakeholder Management Grid: (Table 2)

2.5 Communication plan:

â‘  Principal of Coventry University

Book a day to see the principal and ask for the consent to organize the party.

Problem: The principal may not be in the office on the expected days.

Solution: The student union should quickly find another day to get the permission.

â‘¡ Financial departments of Coventry University

Book a day to see the staff of the financial departments and discuss the proper budget.

Problem: The staff may not be in the office on the expected days. And he/she may give the student union budget which is not expected.

Solution: The student union should quickly find another day to get the permission. As for the budget, the student union should correctly use the budget and reduce unnecessary cost.

â‘¢ Customer – end users

Student union can send e-mails through the school mail to inform the teachers and students before the leaflets come out. And then distribute the leaflets to students and teachers from Feb 22^nd-28^th.

Problem: Not every teachers or students who have been informed of the evening party will certainly go there. Owing to the weather problem, they may not be willing to go, too.

Solution: The student union can intensify propaganda and try to catch people’s attention to the evening party.

â‘£ Project team – planners and organizers

They are the members of student union. So they can directly talk to each other. Or sometimes they can contact by phone or e-mail.

Problem: Planners and organizers get sick, which result in the delay of the project.

Solution: Find other student union member to take place of them to carry on the work.

⑤ Food and drink suppliers

Contact them through telephone. If the factories are near the school, the members can walk to the factories and talk to the suppliers directly.

Problem: The food and drink can not be distributed to Coventry University on expected day.

Solution: Keep calling the suppliers every 2 or 3 days and ask the process rate.

â‘¥ Printing plant

Contact them through telephone. If the factories are near the school, the members can walk to the factories and talk to the suppliers directly.

Problem: The tickets and leaflets can not arrive in the student union on the expected day.

Solution: Keep calling the printing plant every 2 or 3 days and ask the progress rate.

⑦ Stage supplier

Go to the meeting place directly. After finding a suitable stage, then talk to the supplier directly. If he is not here, then contact him by telephone.

Problem: Someone else has booked the stage before the Coventry student union.

Solution: Student union should have found the stage as early as possible. If it is still too late, find another stage.

2.6 Risk analysis:

(Table 3)

2.7 Scheduling: The chart below shows the steps of organizing the evening party.

(Table 4)

2.8 Milestones: Milestones are essential to manage and control a project, but there is no task associated with it (although preparing a milestone can involve significant work). Usually a milestone is used as a project checkpoint to validate how a project is progressing and revalidate the work. (Hub Pages, 2008) The following milestones are showing the completion of every phases of the project.

(Table 5)

2.9 Constraints: The only constraint or deadline is the evening party opening day, scheduled to occur on March 1^st, 2013. The entrance tickets should be sent to the student union on February 27^th, 2013. And the leaflets should be sent to the student union no later than February 22^nd, 2013.

3, Conclusion

This project is aiming at conduct an evening party on March 1^st, 2013 in order to celebrate the Art Festival. It mainly covers the project scope like project deliverables, project objects, resources, stakeholder analysis and so on. A Gantt chat will be used below to set up a timeline of the project.

Conducting an evening party is not an easy task. It requires the organizers and planners to have good understanding of every issues of a project. They should also pay attention to the details in order to minimum the problems. They can have conclusion after the evening party and learn a lesson from it. In the future, they can improve the quality of next project.

References:

(1) Toolbox (2007) Project Definition – Why, What, Who, When and How? [online], available at http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/lpuleo/project-definition-why-what-who-when-and-how-20530 [November 15, 2007]

(2) SearchCIO (2012) Project Scope [online], available at http://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/project-scope [July 2012]

(3) Connecxion (2009) Project Stakeholders [online], available at http://cnx.org/content/m31209/latest/ [Sep 24, 2009]

(4) Hub Pages (2008) Project Milestones [online], available at http://aramyus.hubpages.com/hub/Project_milestones [July 26, 2008]

Appendix (Gantt Chart)