CS 202

Company Project 1: Downsizing Defense

Introduction: Times are hard at your company, and your goal is to keep your project team from getting the axe. This is a largely a PR (public relations) mission. You have to be able to explain what each member of your group does in a positive way, and present the value of your project and your team publicly.

Project Elements:

A) Create a spreadsheet budget that will show your monthly cashflow for this year, in which you earned about $750,000 while expending a $1,000,000 budget. Project 2 years into the future, to show a balanced cashflow within one year, and then turn a 25% profit within 2 years. This budget must have 3 graphs showing your progress month by month (one for last year, and one for each of the next 2 years). You must ask for the budget to increase by 25% to 1.25 million. Break down the budget into advertising (50%), costs (20%) and salaries (30%). You can add the $250,000 extra dollars to any area you think will help your group. Use a pie-chart type graph to compare the old budget with the new budget.

B) There needs to be a budget justification paper. This is key, as it gives some reason why management should keep funding a losing project like yours. You must find information on similar corporate decisions that affected the performance of other real companies in the real world. Mention specific and general cases you find on the Internet or in magazines. This needs to be no more than a page long. Try to find anything you can to back up your claims that more money in any area will help. Document your sources!

C) Public Power point presentation. Write a 5 minute presentation that one of your group members must present in class. This Presentation should show the information gathered in the other portions of this report, describing your project and your progress, and your future chances.

D) Each member of the group needs to write a personal paper, only a paragraph or two, on how great of a job they are doing and how critical they are to the company. This must take no more than 1 page each.

E) The CEO needs a secret, back-up disaster plan. Write this one page report for upper management eyes only. In case your team does get cut, list two people who should get the axe first. List them in priority order, and explain why they should be the ones fired. You can’t, of course, list yourself. (This is just made up, and does not have anything to do with the performance of your group members).

Notes: This project will require a considerable amount of research. The more research you do, the more realistic your work will be, improving your grade. It is up to your group to decide on the division of labor. You can either work together on everything, or assign each member a different task to complete, or some mixture of the two. Make sure that you all see everyone’s work and progress along the way, so that you aren’t surprised at the end.