Case Study $-$ Appoint the Project Team

With more than $10$ years publishing experience, Clear text publisher is considered one of the most

successful new venture publishing companies in the market today. CEO Michel Stetson set up the

company in $1995$ with the intension of taking successful e$-$book and re$-$publishing them in physical hard

copy format. By creating strict criteria for the selection of books to republish, Michel has been able to

publish, market and sell a number of top sellers, making ClearText an extremely profitable business

venture.

For the first seven years ClearText publishing has dominated the market and built a strong publishing

brand name, however in the last $3$ years a new competitor $$publish offline$$ has entered the market and

poached some of our key accounts by offering out authors higher royalty percentage on book sales. In

response we have forced to increase our author royalties also, resulting in a reduced profit margin.

At a ClearText board meeting held earlier this year, I presented a plan a bid to purchase the Publish Offline

company. The board agreed that, if successful the bid would enable ClearText to regain its lost customers

and acquire new customers from its competitor$$s stable of authors. It would also enable us to reduce our

Canterbury Institute of Management $($CIM$)$

MBIS$403$ Project and Change Management in ICT

author royalties to their original margin, restoring company profit level to their original level as well.

ClearText subsequently made a bid to the shareholders of Publish Offline and after three months of

negotiation, our two companies have signed a deal for acquisition.

We have established formal project to merge both companies under ClearText brand. The success of this

merge is critical to ClearText ongoing business. It$$s the two companies are not merged seamlessly and

without major disruption, then ClearText may not achieve the business benefits it plans on and fail to

increase company profit. Because this project is so crucial to the ClearText business, I have established a

project board of key ClearText shareholders and created a comprehensive job description for the

recruitment of a senior project manager to take on this initiative.

This job description covers the:

$$ Purpose of the project manager$$s role within the project

$$ project manager$$s day to day responsibilities.

$$ Organizational structure of the project and the project manager$$s reporting lines

$$ Lines of communication between the project manager and other key project staff

$$ Skill, experience, qualification and personal attributes required by this role

$$ Key performance criteria for success in this role

$$ General working environment, salary package and special working conditions

Explain each task in detail.

$1.$ What are the key responsibilities of the newly appointed Project manager?

$2.$ What type of management skills and competencies Project manager should have?

$3.$ What type of educational and industry qualifications this project manager should have?

$4.$ What type of personality project manager should have?

$5.$ What are the key performance criteria$$s used to determine the success of this role?