BAS-ITAM Promotion for Nontransferable AAS Students

Triple Constraint Time: We thoughtfully scheduled the tasks for the entire project into a sequence that allowed us to identify a critical path to

completion. We relied on Microsoft Project to plan, manage, and track our schedule. Time was a significant constraint because, as full-time students, our team members had to carefully manage our calendars to adhere to the project schedule while also meeting deadlines for our other classes and obligations.

Cost: Our initial cost estimate was $19,782, which we determined by projecting time and labor requirements against a standard hourly labor cost. For production of our printed deliverable (offset printing), we obtained a quote from a full-service print vendor, based on an estimated supply of printed pages to meet the distribution requirements for at least one year. We later reduced our cost estimate significantly to $9,767. We tracked changes to identify risks for budget overages in our weekly team roundtable meetings.

Scope: The key elements of our project scope were: Deliverable 1: A 5 minute video containing information necessary to explain BAS-ITAM to AAS students (± 2 minute tolerance)

Deliverable 2: A 1-2 page printed supplement to remind students of what they learned from the video and guide them to take action if they are interested in learning more or applying for ITAM

Target Audience: Students in nontransferable AAS programs, especially in schools that do not have an ITAM Center on campus

End User Testing (Quality Management): Present the video to a group of our target audience members and conduct a survey to determine whether it was effective and to gather feedback for the final revision

Financial Aid Content: We wish to include very brief info about CWU’s financial aid, but we wish to constrain the scope of this element to a single clip within the video and a single item on the printed supplement, because it is a subject at the very edge of our project’s scope and purpose

We met our scope, cost, and time targets by producing the deliverable by the end of November and conducting a focus test with a cohort of students in a target AAS program. Based on feedback from the test, we revised the final deliverables and prepared the project to conclude on time.

Stakeholders Sponsor: Brandi Harrington

ITAM Staff/Administration

AAS Students

AAS Faculty

Project Team (Team 5)

Benefits: The real benefit is inspiring students to seek and explore information that will guide them in finding life changing opportunities that BAS-ITAM offers. The video makes potential transfer students aware of the program’s existence, and explains how and why they should consider it in their future plans. The deliverable package provides ITAM with a recruiting tool that we expect would be approved by Public Affairs and usable immediately. AAS Faculty can help us, with minimal effort, to reach virtually every member of our target audience.

We expect our value proposition to center on the program’s several specializations and widely-applicable core curriculum, which together make the program suitable for graduates of many diverse programs of study.

Summary of Project ResultsWe conducted a focus test group at Lake Washington Institute of Technology, with 13 students in the third quarter of the Computer Security & Network Technology (CSNT) program.

We asked three questions before the video and three questions after to get a feel for the changes of attitudes.

Pre-Video Questions:

1. Were you aware that non-transferrable degree credits are transferrable to a 4-year BAS degree at CWU’s-ITAM program? (Yes: 7, No: 6)(ITAM has a lecturer on campus at LWIT, so this group was already aware of ITAM, which most AAS students would not be)

2. Did you already know of CWU’s ITAM program? (Yes: 7, No: 6)

3. What are your plans after CSNT? Are you planning to further your education? (Yes: 4, No: 9)

Post-Video Questions:

4. Is there any information you would like to see included in the video that you did not see? (Yes: 4, No: 9)

5. What changes would you recommend for this video? Information is good

Decrease volume of music behind speech

6. Did the specialization information make you want to explore your options? Yes, specifically Network Management and Web & Database Management

Observations of Participants During Presentation:

Paid Attention? No: 3, Somewhat: 3, Completely: 7 (plus instructor)

Original and Actual Schedule

Our timeline, below, shows the milestones in our schedule. We had no milestones slip, and task completion never slipped enough to cause a trickle-down delay of other tasks. We carefully planned distributions of work and Project Managers kept in constant contact with every team member to ensure progress was on schedule and to assist as needed.

Critical Path Planning: Develop a basis for a project deliverable, and standards to communicate as a team,

as well as, how we will address issues as a team.

Pre-Initiating: Gather the information for beginning the deliverable research, and who we will address to present the deliverable to.

Initiating: Developing the project charter and beginning the work.

Executing: Developing schedules for work deadlines, reaching out to stakeholders and potential targets to initiate communication.

Monitoring/Controlling: Keeping an eye out on progress, and drafting deliverables.

Closing: Final deliverables, and lessons learned.

This was the most economical solution to completing this project on time and on budget. These objectives led us to complete the project in an organized manner.

WBS/Gantt Chart

The Gantt Chart helped us solidify the project schedule, as well as, giving the team a working guidebook.

Broke down individual deadlines and tasks to be completed.

Gave us a time basis for beginning new objectives and track ones completed

Milestones

Planning- Proposal, communication mgmt. plan, staff mgmt. plan, quality mgmt. plan, risk mgmt. plan

Pre-Initiating- Business case, cost estimate, stakeholder analysis, team contract, financial analysis, value proposition

Initiating- Distribution of work form, Project Charter

Executing- Gantt chart, Milestone report, External Stakeholder Communication

Monitoring/Controlling- Progress reports, Draft of deliverables

Closing- Hand off report, lessons learned, final deliverables

These milestones led the team in achieving certain progress at specific times. It also assured us that we would make the project deadline of 12/6/16 and on budget.

Budget

Original Budget Projection: $19,782

We reduced our budget during Lab #2, because we discovered that some things we anticipated (such as needing to pay participants in a focus test) were not necessary expenses.

Final Budget: $9,767 (including a 10% reserve)

At one point, we identified a risk of having to redo some of the work for filming (due to a problem with the audio equipment for two video clips). We were able to use the audio recorded by the camera’s built-in mic (after extensive audio processing) to blend these clips without a noticeable change in the audio quality. If we had needed to reshoot the clip, it would have both delayed the focus test (and possibly final delivery) and could have wiped out the entire budget reserve.

Project Assessment

Scope, Time & Cost Goals: Our project was on track with our scope and did not creep. Each milestone was completed on time (some were done up to 3 days early).

Our continuous quality assessments determined that work was excellent quality, and we made adjustments as necessary to ensure each lab submission met or exceeded expectations.

There were no deadline changes, we tracked our schedule with the original Gantt chart.

By managing the schedule and ensuring that each task met the objectives in our scope, we managed to stay within budget.

Project Assessment (continued)

Satisfaction of Customer/Audience: After careful testing with the focus group, we believe that the deliverable accomplishes our goals and delivers the right message. We believe that the information was relevant, both touching on each necessary topic and avoiding information overload in any one area (and in the whole of the presentation).

We observed our audience while they observed our draft deliverable. Those who were interested remained interested throughout the video. We accept that BAS-ITAM is only interesting and relevant to some AAS students, so we don’t believe the students who were inattentive or indifferent during the presentation indicate that we failed in any way.

Project Assessment (continued)

Overall Results: The project came in on time and within the budget. The test group was pleased with the deliverable. We believe this is a strong indication that ITAM can use our deliverable package in production and expect a healthy ROI from any students who ultimately enroll in ITAM as a result of having seen our video.

Our team was careful in determining expertise for certain tasks, as well as being involved with our stakeholders and target audiences.

We believe that we have created a successful Project, and that our results show this as well.