Project Proposal: University of Arizona Conference on Big Data

This project proposal outlines the comprehensive plan for organizing a three-day conference, a collaborative effort between the ABC event management agency and the International Council of Management Research, hosted by the University of Arizona. The proposal details the conference's objectives, which center on attracting researchers, academicians, and industry practitioners in big data management and related fields. It defines the project scope, including key deliverables such as securing globally acclaimed speakers, ensuring international participation, and facilitating paper presentations and publications. The project plan also identifies the roles and responsibilities of the project team, including organizing and hospitality committees, and establishes a work breakdown structure. Risk management strategies are incorporated to address potential challenges. The document includes an executive summary, initial project plan, budget estimates, and communication procedures, offering a detailed roadmap for successful conference execution.

Dear Expert,
This is the whole report. You need this to start your work (Project 3) the
instruction has sent to you earlier.
Date: 12 September 2016
Project Proposal
Project Overview
The present case in this project concerns the organizing of three day conference
by the ABC event management agency in collaboration with the International Council of
Management Research for the University of Arizona. The conference will be targeting
international as well as national individuals who have a scholarly interest in the
conference theme. For the international participants it is desired that they must be
passport holders so that there are no problems in organizing the visa. The entire details
regarding the conference will be shared with the prospective participants with the help
of a temporary conference website which will be specifically designed for furnishing the
detailed information to the participants. The participants will be able to gain the details
regarding the conference, the program schedule, registration procedure and fees as
well as the procedures to reach the conference venue, the alternatives for lodging
etcetera along with the facility to download required forms via this website portal. The
website will also enable the participants to communicate their concerns by contacting
the Advisory Committee; the international participants will also have the facility to
contact the representatives from the U.S. Embassy via this website portal. The portal
will also have a section that can deliver the requisite information as per the unique
queries of the respective participants. The conference would be sponsored jointly by the
International Council of Management Research and the University’s Computing
Research Centre. The project planning requires the need for outlining various types of
actions; in words of Kerzner (2013) a general project plan establishes the “scope,
time, cost, quality, human resources, communications, risks, procurement and closeout
of the proposed event” where as another set of authors Dinsmore & Cabanis-Brewin,
(2006) identify project plan with “the work authorization plan, work package plan, cost
planning and schedule planning and so on to control the project progress.”
Project objectives
In this case the project objective is to organize a three day conference for the
researchers, academicians and industry practitioners who are engaged in big data
management and the related areas. The initial planning for the conference requires the
organizers or the project team to discern and define the theme of the event precisely
first and thereafter explicitly in terms of the various sub-themes that can be entwined

together with the main theme. There after a specific date has to be chosen keeping in
mind the convenience of the participants, the feasibility of the organizers as well as the
event theme and agreed upon by the project management team. The project charter for
the proposed project of organizing the three-day conference is an important document
that yields the description regarding its precise purpose, project-objectives, the success
criteria as well as the specific project requirements and it is drafted at its initiating
planning. The success criterion of this project is determined by the participation rate in
the conference which is evaluated across local, national and international participants.
Then the second aspect that will help in evaluating the success of the conference would
be the total number of papers presented which are bifurcated further across the different
themes of presentation.
Project Scope & Deliverables
The next document that is pertinent for the planning for the project process is the
project scope statement that presents the comprehensive summary of the results the
project will produce along with describing the necessary assumptions and inherent
constraints. It is used as a written confirmation of the results the project is designed to
yield. The project scope in this case comprises of the various interactions and activities
that are undertaken to accomplish a successful conference. In order to document the
project scope statement a successful kick-off meeting would be conducted with the
various stakeholders involved in the process who actively brainstorm together to
discuss the various aspects of the project and arrive at the most feasible, economic and
efficient way to carry out the project (Burke, 2013). Here the recruitment and
organization of the different work groups takes place and the supporting conference
staff/assistants are identified within the organization.
The financial planning for the conference initiates with the determination of the
budget as well as listing the different kinds of possible expenditure along with the
identification of the funding/ income sources.
Proposal Components
On the basis of the project scope statement, the primary Quality Assurance
process deliverables for the project of organizing the three-day conference are identified
as:(1) ensuring the presence of globally acclaimed guest speakers
(2) ensuring the participation of international guests (3) the presentation of at least 25
papers in each of the theme pertaining to the subject (4) the publication of the
conference proceedings with the best 30 papers presented during the conference as
well as directing their publication to good quality journals. The list of these deliverables
serves as a guide map that directs the further course of the project. The project
manager reviews and approves the framework for quality management; oversees the
adherence to activities that ensure project quality along with ensuring completion of
project within the stipulated timeframe. Thus it is seen that the Project Scope for the
above mentioned project encompasses the participation of the local, national and
1

international researchers, academicians, scholars and industry practitioners as well as
presentation and publication of the papers which are the end-outcomes the project will
produce along with the constraints on the budget and resources along with the
assumption that the topic chosen for the conference.
The important stakeholders in the project as well as the project team ought to be
in agreement with the different terms specified in the scope statement as this will ensure
that there is little conflict while executing the project. Such an arrangement will ensure
the project success even before the actual beginning of the project work. However the
scope statement of the project needs to be supported with a proper justification; it also
needs to imbibe the traits products or services traits as well as the inherent
characteristics of the results to be produced. Then the acceptance criteria should clearly
outline the necessary criterion for the project deliverables; objectives, the restrictions,
the inherent project assumptions as well as the excluding criterion. The anticipated
modifications that can be introduced during the process are also integral constituents in
the Scope Statement. Thus it can be seen that this statement
enable the stakeholders to procure an understanding of the work deliverables and
ascertain if there is an alignment between the product acceptance criterion and the
relevant outcomes. The groups required for the project management process are
distributed across the activities of (i) initiating the project (ii) project-planning (iii) project-
execution (iv) supervision and (v) project-closure.
Project team roles and responsibilities
In order to organize a successful conference the project team will be bifurcated across
the organizing committee, the hospitality committee, the project team leader who will be called
the convener of the project of organizing this conference. Then with respect to the scheduling of
the conference as per the different themes the availability of the concerned chairpersons and
the coordinators will be made. The primary assumptions with respect to the prior consent from
the resource persons; speakers are identified on the basis of the brainstorming discussions in
the first week even before the kick off meeting. Then the tentative guidelines regarding the costs
and the resources are located as well. Once the project constraints are identified then a kick off
meeting will take place where in the commonly agreed upon primary assumptions with respect
to costs, resources as well as the schedule are discussed and thereafter the project related
responsibilities are distributed across the different team members. Here the specific role and
responsibility of the individual is fixed as a part of the bigger group and the individual
expectations are explained to each team member. For example, the hospitality committee is
entrusted with the charge of arranging the food and lodging of the resource persons,
participants as well as the event organizers.
With respect to the detailed planning the deadlines for receiving the abstracts, the
early bird offers on the participation charges for different categories such as students, research
scholars, academicians/faculty as well as industry practitioners are fixed. The creation of these
project milestones help in organizing the tasks. The list of accommodation outlets that can be
organized is made along with enlisting the tariffs. These activities are performed before
launching the brochure of the conference, as these details need to be incorporated there in. The
kick off meeting of the project helped in identifying the time frame for each of these activities as
2

well the activities that are expected to follow such as the selection of the abstracts for the
conference and sending the necessary communication to the authors; receiving the fee for
participation and confirming their presentation in the final schedule.
The in accordance to the identified activities the work break down structure of the
conference along with the specified time frame is chalked out. The meeting was also
instrumental in exploring and evaluating the various possible alternatives and further the lists of
potential consequences of the identified outcomes are also ascertained. It was also seen that
what the prospective likelihood of these circumstances is. With the mutual discussion it was
resolved that the determination of the optimum alternatives will be made with the help of the
quantitative approaches like decision tree analysis. It is expected that the quantitative
approaches coupled with the qualitative insights yield better decisions especially when the
decisional alternatives are to be located in the case of uncertainty regarding states of nature.
Then during the planning phase itself a discussion was also made regarding the assessment to
be undertaken with respect to the project related criteria and in this
context, it was located that the visual strategy such as the network diagram can be useful in
locating the minimum project duration. Here the different activities required for the
accomplishment of the project are identified and with the help of the mutual discussions it was
seen that what the order of precedence and succession among these activities is so as to be
able to understand their interdependence. Also the group also discussed that what the
estimated time of these activities are and whether these activity durations can be regarded as
the deterministic or they are probabilistic. Once this is done the activities and their durations are
recorded and from this a representative network of the project was created which was later used
to arrive at the minimum duration of the project. The entire meeting was conducted to facilitate
the coordination among the project team members and locate the appropriate ways to
communicate regarding the project. The due dates for the postings and the intermittent events
are identified and the individuals responsible for these events were fixed during the meeting.
Risk Management
The above mentioned list proposed for the initial planning of the project is by no
means exhaustive as it is intended only to cover the situations which have been
anticipated in advance. However, it is to be seen that there can be unpleasant
happenings with the people, resources or otherwise that cannot be ascertained in
advance and the planning and thinking process requires to cater to these erratic
changes or the operational, socio cultural and other risks too as and when required.
This is a pertinent step while planning the project.
Date Created: 13 September 2016
INITIAL PROJECT PLAN
Executive Summary
The present document exhibits the initial project plan for organizing the conference in
terms of the activities it comprises, the estimate of the project budget along with the breakdown
of costs. It identifies the areas of risk and outlines the contingency plans too. The various
procedures for communication are emphasized and the WBS is presented. The scheduling time
3

and costs estimates are also identified along with a discussion on the management of critical
path. The quality parameters for the project are identified with respect to the productivity,
operational excellence and customer satisfaction. The communication needs of the organization
will be best served with the software Microsoft Office Enterprise Project Management (EPM)
Solution which furnishes an end-to-end support for the project; its four-fold solution advantages
can be comprehensively compressed as improvement in visibility, optimization of the value,
improving the effectiveness of the project as well as in accentuating the efficiency of the project
operations. The document presents the resource requirements, the anticipated project
milestones and their projected process durations along with furnishing the gravest risks will
become a priority to observe and resolve. Accident or individual risks need to be accepted while
operations risk needs to be mitigated by substantive savings.
Initial Project Plan
Project Overview
The present case in this project concerns the organizing of three days
conference by the ABC event management agency in collaboration with the
International Council of Management Research for the University of Arizona. The
conference will be targeting international as well as national individuals who have a
scholarly interest in the conference theme. For the international participants it is desired
that they must be passport holders so that there are no problems in organizing the visa.
The entire details regarding the conference will be shared with the prospective
participants with the help of a temporary conference website which will be specifically
designed for furnishing the detailed information to the participants. The participants will
be able to gain the details regarding the conference, the program schedule, registration
procedure and fees as well as the procedures to reach the conference venue, the
alternatives for lodging etcetera along with the facility to download required forms via
this website portal. The website will also enable the participants to communicate their
concerns by contacting the Advisory Committee; the international participants will also
have the facility to contact the representatives from the U.S. Embassy via this website
portal. The portal will also have a section that can deliver the requisite information as
per the unique queries of the respective participants. The conference would be
sponsored jointly by the International Council of Management Research and the
University’s Computing Research Centre. The project planning requires the need for
outlining various types of actions; in words of Kerzner (2013) a general project plan
establishes the “scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communications, risks,
procurement and closeout of the proposed event” where as another set of authors
Dinsmore & Cabanis-Brewin, (2006) identify project plan with “the work authorization
plan, work package plan, cost planning and schedule planning and so on to control the
project progress.”
1. The exercises of team building that can be useful while organizing the kick-off meeting
for enhancing its effectiveness are discussed as follows:
a. The participants or the stakeholders are first requested to express their expectations from
the project in an explicit manner and hence it is required that they are given an informal
4

environment that encourages them to identify the ingredients that make the project
successful.
b. With the suggestions procured from the participants all the resources pertinent for the
success of the project are identified and organized in accordance to the way they are
required in the different project activities.
c. The scheduling of the project is decided by asking the participants to determine the linking
that exists between the various project tasks; it helps in tracing the predecessors and
successors and organizes the entire project in a structured manner.
d. The technique of brainstorming can be instrumental in deciphering new project ideas and
for outlining the milestones for the project.
Project Objectives
The SMART objectives for the project are summarized as under:
1. Outlining the target population for the project (type of discipline and themes to be covered)
2. Outlining the programs to be provided to the targeted members (facilities)
3. Outlining the capital and infrastructural requirements (space, building, equipments)
4. Outlining the staffing requirements (suppliers for material, the regular staff etc.)
5. Outlining the insurance, safety policies (under the law of the land)
6. Outlining the budget for different requirements
7. Arranging the money to fund expenditures on capital requirement as well as to bear the
running costs
8. Implementing the project plan
Project Outcomes
The entire chain of sequence that commences with the project initiation process followed by
its development as well as its implementation is a gigantic endeavor as there are number of
variables involved. The team in-charge needs to organize the human resources, resources,
scheduling issues, clients’ requirements etcetera within the allocated budget. Then in addition to
these the exposure of the projects to the unpredictability in the contextual environment further
intensifies the task complexity and project handling. The success of a project might be
ascertained provided that it
is able to achieve either or the entire success criterion such as (i) ability to furnish the requisite
quality, (ii) all laid down project objectives, (iii) compliance with the needs of the client, (iv) timely
completion of the project and the entwined activities as per the stipulated schedule and (iv)
attainment of the goals within the allocated budget.
The attainment of the project success is highly dependent on the organizational leadership
which is an instrumental factor in ascertaining how the project is conceived, planned, organized
as well motivating, supervising and controlling the human resources so that the project goals
are accomplished successfully. It is precisely the organization and coordinated approach that
decides the success of any project; thus it is critical how the different activities are aligned with
the organizational requirements and its resources (Cleland & King, 1988).
The intricacy in designing and managing the projects makes it mandatory for the project
manager to ensure a perfect balancing the various constraints and resources. The
documentation of the project requires laying down a Project Charter which is a crucial project
5

document. This document is conceived during the initiation phase of the project and serves an
important role in planning the project. It enlists the guiding information that determines and
describes the primary project purpose, its objectives, and the success criterion along with the
specific high-level necessities of the proposed project. This charter document explicitly spells
each of the above mentioned points in depth and helps in the determination of the fundamental
outcomes that can be realized through the process of Quality Assurance. The present project
intends to invite the researchers, academicians and the industry practitioners working on Big
Data management together on one forum and allow the interactive and enriching discussions.
The project requires the creation of the web-site that will furnish the requisite information to
communicate and correspond with the participants.
Challenges
It is ensured that the project plan document has a perfect alignment and cohesion
among the different project components as it ensures that the project is benefitted through this
integration and collaboration. It is also considered here that the delivery schedules of the project
are apt managed by interfacing the project constituents in a structured and regulated manner.
Then another challenge and complexity faced by the project management team is managing the
various stakeholders in the process in a coordinated way. It is a great learning to plan and
organize the entire project by weaving its different constituents; it yields immense insights about
the development of the project idea right from its conception till implementation that can be
useful for the management and handling of the live projects.
Scope Management
Before proceeding for the documentation of the project scope statement to organize a
successful conference it is required that a kick-off meeting is conducted in the following manner.
The identification of the stakeholder’s categories to be invited for the kick-off meeting is the first
task that needs to be done. Since the kick-off meeting is an important activity for the project that
needs to be undertaken before the project commencement hence the tentative list of significant
representatives from the various stakeholders’ categories is made; this team is entrusted with
the responsibility of locating optimum and feasible alternatives for the project activities (Burke,
2013). The culmination of the meeting witnesses the distribution of the roles and responsibilities
to the different individuals involved in the project; it also imparts the team members the
knowledge about the project objectives along with clarifying the doubts they have regarding the
execution of the project.
Work Breakdown Structure
The various phases of the project are then organized in a structural form that indicates
the strategy for rolling out the project’s initially. According to Kerzner (2013), the logical
framework that organizes the various activities in the project in a coherent manner is called as
projects’ work breakdown structure (WBS); it enlists the several activities in a step down
fashion, wherein each task is decomposed into sub-activities and they are arranged in different
hierarchical levels thereby yielding a process-driven structure that exhibits the way to attain the
project deliverables. The construction of a WBS which is process-centered requires:
• the scheduling of the project phases at level one
6

• the scheduling of the checkpoints or the milestones at level two.
• the scheduling of the required activities for completion of the milestones at level three.
• any additional levels that might be required for reliable estimation of costs and schedule are
placed at the subsequent level based on hierarchy and
• locating all the project deliverables.
Figure 2: Work Breakdown Structure for Project
The organizing committee has to take care of the following pertinent issues. They have
to: Arrange for the venue, which can be within the premises of the University as well as
outside. It is decided that the conference will be carried in the auditorium of Department
of Information Technology while the accommodation will be at varied places in
accordance to participant requirements. Apart from this, catering needs for meals,
lunches, tea and coffee breaks etcetera need to be considered; the suppliers for
conference stationery need to be located and the respective price quotations should be
invited; the local accommodation for non-paying delegates need to be arranges as well
as the requirements such as translation services and equipment for international
delegates will be seen. At the end the journals that will take up the responsibility of
publication of results of conference need to be identified and the evaluation report
7
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Outlining the mission, objectives and goals of the organization that
needs to be accomplished via this conference
Drafting the administrative policies, identifying the requirements
(infrastructure, human resources etc.)
Arranging the resources and executing the plan
Outlining the budget and forecasting the previous estimates, the
sources for obtaining the funds, grants and subsidies from various
agencies
Level 4

publishers are located. In order to ensure the comfortable stay of the conference
participants it is seen that the necessary transport requirements need to be taken care
of. The event organizers need to make arrangements for the shuttle bus that can carry
participants from their place of stay to the conference venue and vice versa. Then for
the out-station candidates and the guest speakers the organizers need to furnish
transport for the site visits as well. For website development the following WBS is
adopted:
Activities Against Desired Outcomes
Outcomes Activities
Web site layout - Develop web site layout
Web site text ready - Develop content of web site
Product’s images ready
- Obtain images of products
- Process the images to post in the web site
Network ready - Install internet access
Hardware installed - Install web server hardware
Web server installed - Install web server software
Internet capacity on maintenance
of web content
- Install software for content
management
- Develop internal capacity on maintenance of web content
Internal capacity on maintenance
of web server
- Develop internal capacity on
maintenance of web server
Internal capacity on
communications with clients
- Develop procedures for
communications with clients
8

- Develop templates for
communications with clients
- Develop internal capacity to deal with
clients
Tasks Resources Required skills
- Develop web site layout - External - Web design
- Develop content of web site - 12Internal staff –
3 hours per day,
for up to 4 months
- English language,
products and services.
- Obtain images products - 1 Internal staff - Photo shooting
- Process the images to post in
the web site
- External - Web design
- Install Internet access - External - Data Network
- Install web server (Hardware) - External - Hardware installation
- Install web server software - External - Web server installation
and configuration
- Install software for content
management
- External - Content management
configuration
The relationship between the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and Milestones together
forms the Project Schedule Matrix (Turner et al., 1992). The initial milestones of the project
include the planning of the project and to gain the approval from MOE to initiate this project.
9

Time Estimates
Project milestones along with the corresponding process duration are exhibited in the following
table.
S. No. Project Milestones DURATION (Days)
1 Project Management Plan finalization & its presentation to ABC 3
2 Getting the contract approved by ABC 1
3 First project meeting with ABC 1
4 Organizing the marketing campaign 120
5 Contacting the universities which are USA accredited and ready to
entwine with ABC for the event
35
6 Contacting as well as finalizing the sponsors 30
7 Finalizing the participants after screening 90
8 Fixing the venue 60
9 Scholarship distribution 3
10 Meetings pertaining to the project After every 15 days
11 Risk Management Analysis Concurrent
12 Updating the Project Management Plan as and when required Concurrent
13 Archiving the files/documentation 7
14 Feedback surveys from ABC/non-ABC universities’ members 14
15 Success/Failure reports 7
16 Final meeting with ABC to submit the necessary reports 1
Resource Scheduling
Project Manager will be responsible for reviewing and approving the Quality
Management Framework; overseeing the project quality activities and ensuring that the project
is completed in the schedule timeframe (Burke, 2013). He is also responsible for mitigating any
risks or issues relating to the quality of the project. Project Management Team Members will be
responsible for ongoing quality revision and providing feedback on deliverables and the project
schedule. The Team is to constantly find new innovative methods to improve the quality
standards for ABC. ABC Representatives will be responsible for providing feedback to the
Project Management Team to assist in determining the quality revisions. Event Sponsors will be
responsible for providing essential project resources (funding) to ensure project activities can
proceed to the set quality standards. Marketing Team will be responsible to provide promotional
material and plans to a high quality standard.
Total Resource Cost
The marketing will be outsourced. The allocated budget for print media comprising
brochures, welcome packs is $20,000. The advertising campaign comprises email flyers,
10

targeted social media awareness, promotional video production as well as the ABC and event-
specific website budgeted at $20,000. The budgeted cost is $5,000 per day with the event
running for three days. The negotiations with the University will yield some waivers in exchange
for the international promotional value that this event will bring to the campus.
The attendance of around 300 for the 3-day event is expected and the budget on the
food and drinks is fixed at $50 per person ($15,000 total) which shall be covered by a major
sponsor. A celebratory awards dinner will be organized on the final night to congratulate all the
participating teams as well as to award the prizes to the winners. The event is estimated to cost
around $30 per person ($9,000 total and an additional cost of $500 for lighting and musical
entertainment) and it will be ticketed at $90 per person. The cash prize for the winners of the
student challenge is set at $5000 to be presented by cheque. A labor commitment of 3 staff
members for 8 hours per week over 28 weeks charged at $50 per hour which totals $36,960
($33,600 + GST $3,360) is estimated. The 3 project management specialists to the host country
will be sent to coordinate the smooth delivery of the event. The specialists will work for 10 hours
each day @ $50 per hour ($3,300) with flight disbursements of $7,500. A sensitivity analysis is
also included to account for cost increases or decreases and the flow on effect to other
components of the project. Our sensitivity analysis shows a 20% fluctuation in expected
revenues and expenses. In this analysis, the lowest expected revenue ($128,000) would be
$36,525 short of the highest expense ($164,525). For invoice and expense reconciliation, we
will present weekly cost progress reports that will outline what was spent, for what reason and
what value was gained for the organization.
Other considerations include a ‘check and balance’ system for expenses to be approved
by another staff member. This ensures authorization compliance is improved and chance of
fraudulent behavior is reduced (Gray et al., 2006). Emergency funds for contingencies can be
accessed by secondary authority only to stop the outflow of funds toward a specific issue. The
contracts between the ABC and external consultants is to be managed in-house and negotiated,
stored and paid by one staff member to save multiple handling and time.
Risk Management Plan
The various risks associated with this project may be categorized as under (Kerzner, 2013):
Individual Risk
Due to personal injury, accident or health issue impediments may be observed causing
slow progress in the course; delay or miss in timely reporting and perception-expectation gaps
etc.
Socio-cultural Risk
Delays in schedule or misinterpretation of information may arise due to cultural
differences across teams working in projects.
Operations Risk
Expenses may blow out of proportion if the sponsorship funds fail to meet the project
expenses.
11