1. Identify 10-20 risks and 10-20 opportunities for the case study project by simulating the risk identification techniques specified in your RMP. Focus on those risks/opportunities that may impact the schedule, budget, scope and other risk categories specified in your RMP.
2. Add the risks and opportunities to the Risk Register template. Use the risk statement format agreed upon by your group. Ensure the statements are clearly stated and properly describe the risk and the anticipated consequence.
3. Fill-in the remaining risk identification columns as specified in your RMP. (Note: Do not begin analyzing the risks.)
4. Submit the updated the Risk Register to this assignment submission.

LAZRTRIM CASE STUDY

You are the manager of a training development team within a large global company that is a leading manufacturer of lawn mowers. Your teams primary role within the organization is to develop product training that supports all new products.

New Product Overview

Your company has developed a new product called LAZRTRIM. This is an attachment that uses laser technology to cut grass. It is a new concept that has never been introduced by any other manufacturer. It enables users to mow grass at faster ground speeds in wet or dry conditions and processes the grass so there are virtually no clippings produced. This new attachment will be available as an option any new lawn mower or it can be retrofitted to a customers existing lawn mower. The cost of this new option is $1000, which raises the base price for a new lawn mower to $4000. The retrofit cost is around $2000 with dealer installation.

Project Overview

Your team must develop a training program that will show customers how to operate this new attachment. This training will be delivered by including a jump drive with the attachments operators manual. Your team has a standard training development process referred to as ADDIE that has been recognized as a best practice within your company. This standard process defines that your training must support these four objectives:

• Identify the main components of the equipment
• Identify general operating procedures as defined in the operators manual
• Recall the safety information as defined in the operators manual
• Identify all maintenance intervals for the attachment as defined in the operators manual

You can see that a critical input to the training development is the operators manual. Operators manual development is outsourced to a local authoring company located near the factory where your team resides. The project management for this development is done by a different internal department. It is a legal requirement for the operators manual to be included with each attachment. Therefore, no attachments can be shipped until your training is complete.

The primary market for LAZRTRIM will be in North America. Your training will need to be translated into Spanish and French. All translation is outsourced to an off-shore translation firm that has been used for many years. They have a strong understanding of your content and development processes and have a solid track record of delivering on time and within budget. The operators manual will also be translated using this same company.

Project Environment

Product Design

The product development for LAZRTRIM follows a well-defined product development process that is used enterprise-wide. It consists of six phases:

• Phase 1Product Planning: Concept is created and market research is conducted.

• Phase 2Project Definition: Overall project scope and budget are defined. Senior leadership approval is obtained to proceed with design.
• Phase 3Product Development: Electronic design starts. Low-level prototypes are built to test individual systems.
• Phase 4Product Demonstration: Complete prototype units are built and tested. Customer evaluations are conducted. All lessons learned are routed back through design. Approval from senior leadership to start production is granted or denied.
• Phase 5Product Implementation: Factory prepares for production. All customer support activities (i.e. service parts, training, technical manuals, service tools) and advertising activities are finalized. Senior leadership approves to release product to the dealers for start of sale.
• Phase 6Product Closure: Initial quality is measured on the first units that are shipped. Lessons learned are documented and archived. Resources are transitioned to other projects.

The project is governed by a cross-functional project management team that has representatives from manufacturing, supply management, product support, engineering and marketing. You are a member of this team.

The total development cycle for a new product such as this is three years. Historically, you begin planning for your training development at the beginning of phase four, which is usually 12-months before the start of sales of a product. This is also when development of the operators manual begins.

As you can image, your group will need to rely heavily on one of the prototype attachments produced in phase four to do your training. You will be sharing one attachment with the operators manual development team. The attachment will be located at their facility.

Training

The ADDIE process consists of these phases:

• AAnalysis: Analyze the training needs and determine the gap between current skills/knowledge and the required skills/knowledge.
• DDesign: Design objectives to fill the gap.
• DDevelop: Create training assets (i.e. video, animation, PowerPoint, etc.) that meet the objectives.
• IImplement: Test and publish the training to all the required outputs. Translated as required.
• EEvaluate: Get user feedback and implement lessons learned back into design.

ADDIE is an iterative process throughout the training development cycle. Internal reviews are completed during the implement phase to test the accuracy and completeness of the training before it is published to final production.

The training organization that your team is a part of has dedicated instructors for all the products. These instructors spend 60 percent of their time out of the office training dealers and customers on the product they are responsible for. One instructor has been assigned as the subject matter expert or SME for this new attachment. Your team will rely heavily on this person to gain knowledge of the product and to develop the training script.

Your development team contains four people. Two people on your team are instructional designers. These designers are experts in the ADDIE process and are well versed in creating solid training based on clearly defined objectives. The other two people are curriculum developers. These developers are experts in the tools and processes needed to create the training assets. Examples of tools include video, graphics creation software, and the software used to generate the training content. All team members are very experienced and have worked on multiple operator training development projects in the past. You have determined that one designer and one developer will be dedicated to this project.

The typical workflow of training development in your organization starts with the SME sitting down with the instructional designer to review the project scope and set objectives. The SME then develops the script for the training based on those objects. Once that script is outlined, the curriculum developer works with the SME to develop the training. Refer to the Work Breakdown Structure below for all tasks and assignments.

Your ADDIE process is documented at approximately three months. You expect this project to take that entire duration due the circumstance of this new product development. The operators manual development cycle has typically taken four months. Neither of these includes translations. Translation cycle time historically has been one month. In this case, the translator has committed to having both languages done within this time period.

Critical Success Factors

Your senior leadership group has defined the following factors as critical to the success of this project.

• On-time delivery: This new attachment is an extremely important initiative to the companys portfolio. Hitting the launch date is critical.

• Operator acceptance: Since this is a new technology, its important for customers to have a clear understanding of this new attachment, its ease of use, and its lower total cost of ownership. The quality of your training and its ability to hit its objectives is essential to success and acceptance.

• Budget: This project is heavily funded due to its importance and the uniqueness of the technology. Management is willing to make sacrifices to the budget in order to meet schedule. In past projects, a five percent cost overrun has been acceptable.