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 1st.
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 21st, 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.
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.

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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)

Item

Budget

Stage (with stage lighting)

£1200

Audio equipments

£450

Performers

£0

Clothes

£300

Leaflets and playbill

£30

Tickets

£20

Food and drink (buy from the food and drink suppliers outside the university)

£200

Decoration

£200

Food and drink distributors

£180

Total

£2580

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 22nd-28th.
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)

Risk

Probability

Risk level

Impact

Solution

Budget is insufficient

Low

Medium

Medium

Reduce unnecessary cost. Find something cheaper to take place of the expensive one.

Delay of the project

Low

High

High

Tell the customers what is the reason and say sorry. Make sure everything is ready before the evening party starts.

Damage in equipment

Medium

Low

Medium

Before the evening party, reserve equipment should be ready.

Absence of performers

Low

Medium

Medium

Cancel the show. If one person is absent but which will not affect the show too much, the show can carry on.

2.7 Scheduling: The chart below shows the steps of organizing the evening party.
(Table 4)

Item

Date

Have a project meeting

21/01/13

Go to see the principal and get the permission of organizing an evening party (including make an appointment)

22/01/13-25/01/13

Go to see the financial department and get the budget (including make an appointment)

22/01/13-25/01/13

Find a meeting place with stage

28/01/13-30/01/13

Find the performers and give them the budget for clothes

31/01/13-04/02/13

Design the pattern of the leaflets and tickets

31/01/13-04/02/13

Decide the playbill

05/02/13-06/02/13

Go to the printing plant and deal with the tickets, leaflets and playbill.

07/02/13-11/02/13

Buy the decoration

12/02/13

Call for volunteers to distribute food and drink in the evening party

12/02/13

Decorate the stage

13/02/13-14/02/13

Make a list of what food and drink to buy

15/02/13

Find the food and drink suppliers

18/02/13-21/02/13

Distribute the leaflets

22/02/13-28/02/13

Rehearsal of the evening party and find the problems

26/02/13

Sell the tickets

28/02/13-01/03/13

Test the equipment

28/02/13

Begin the evening party and the end of the evening party

01/03/13

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)

Milestones

Date

Project initiation (A meeting to discuss how to conduct the project is necessary. If not, the project can not start. )

21/01/2013

Get the permission from the principal (Without permission, student union can not organize the evening party)

22/01/13-25/01/13

Get the budget from the financial department (Without budget, student union can not begin to organize the evening party)

22/01/13-25/01/13

Requirement complete (Requirement like stage, performers should complete. If not, the evening party can not be conducted. Leaflets should have been distributed to inform the students and teachers. At last, ticket should be ready. Or audiences can not buy or enter the meeting place in time.)

26/01/2013 — 24/02/2013

Project close (It indicates that the evening party ends, which is the main goal of the project. Student union can at the same time learn something from the project and make a conclusion in order to do better in the future.)

28/02/2013 — 01/03/2013

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