Individual Capstone Project – Consulting Project Proposal

Ind. Project Proposal Due by 11:59pm EST on 12/11/2020

Your final assignment is designed to be a culmination of your coursework within the MSOL program, done within the context of consulting. Simply put, the deliverable is a detailed consulting project proposal and a presentation. Your proposal should focus on a key business issue facing your current employer, or an organization for which you have intimate knowledge of its operations and business activities. The structure of your proposal will be as follows (this is largely based on the information in Wickham & Wilcock textbook on pp. 69-74), and you must use the template detailed below:

• Title: Client organization and a brief descriptive phrase [You should have this from OL689]
• Executive Summary: Not more than a page stating what the project aims to achieve in broad terms and the summary/abstract of the content of your document
• Requirements: This should include:
  • Background information on the organization (as opposed to a normal consulting proposal, you should assume that your reader has never heard of the organization – in other words, be comprehensive!) [You should have this from OL689]
  • The opportunities/issues facing the organization that are the focus of the proposed consulting engagement. [You should have this from OL689]
  • The high-level scope of the project. [You should have this from OL689]
  • Data Collection & Analysis (collection of data to know which issues to address)
• Deliverables (what the project will produce/deliver to the client)
• Desired Outcomes (what the organization will gain from the project)
• Approach (how you would go about doing the consulting work)
• Timeline (the schedule for completion of the project, from start to finish)
• Resources Required (both in terms of consultants and company personnel)
• Budget/Cost Estimates

Your project proposal is due on Blackboard by midnight of the last day of class, 12/11/2020. (See grading rubric).

PowerPoint Presentation

PowerPoint Presentation Due by 11:59pm EST on 12/10/20

Your presentation should not be more than 10 PowerPoint slides and not more than 10 minutes duration. This should be posted on the Main Discussion Board for your colleagues to see and is due on the Thursday, of the last week of class. The presentation is 50 points, and it should be submitted as voice-over presentation. The reason behind submitting your PPT before the main paper is that comments made on your PPT by colleagues may help in finalizing your final proposal. This also means that you should have the final draft of your paper before preparing your PPT. The PPT is to present what you have in your proposal. Assume you are meeting your clients on the ground, you will present your proposal to them and hand over your full proposal. This is the reason behind submitting the PPT first before the final paper. What have you learned from your data gathering and analysis of their organization? What are you proposing to do for them and why should they hire you as a consultant over others assuming it is a competitive bid to help implement the recommendations you have proposed? What should somebody who will not have the time to read your proposal and sitting in your audience know and be convinced that you understand their problem, and you know how to get their problem resolved? Refer to the grading rubric for the PPT for more details.