Objective: Define the project's purpose and scope.

Deliverable: Project Charter in Microsoft Project. Upload the Microsoft Project file and report. In a separate Word document, answer the following:

• Explain the process of cost planning for the project. Describe the techniques and methodologies that will be used to estimate costs, including any historical data, expert judgment, or industry benchmarks. Discuss how the project team will identify and categorize costs, and how cost baselines will be established.
• what would be a cost estimation. how would a document detailing the estimated costs for each cost category, along with the methodology and assumptions used. Use appropriate estimation techniques such as analogous estimation, bottom-up estimation, or parametric estimation. Provide a detailed breakdown of how you arrived at each cost estimate, including any assumptions made.

Global Green Books Publishing was started two years ago by two friends, Jim King, and Brad Mount, who met in college while studying in Philadelphia, USA. In the new business, Jim focused on editing, sales, and marketing while Brad Mount did the electronic assembly and publishing of books for Global Green Books. Their business was successful and profitable in the first two years due to contracts from two big businesses. In their third year, they got very busy thanks to their third major customer, a local college that needed customized eBooks. They hired several part-time employees to help them with their publishing business. But by the end of the third year of operation, Global Green Books started experiencing critical problems. They were: unable to leverage all the new employees effectively unable to deliver eBooks to their customers on schedule unable to provide quality textstime and money was being spent fixing defects in their products unable to control coststheir business was not profitable in the third year. Global Green Books saw a significant rise in issues, a lot of unpleasant "surprises" were cropping up; business was down as new resources were hired, also some of the projects were poorly estimated. The local university was unhappy as their eBook products reached campus late for use by professors and students. In some cases, the books were a week or two late. Since the courses must start on schedule and students need their books at the beginning of their courses, the new lucrative college customer was unhappy. One of the new part-time employees hired by Jim and Brad, Samantha, had taken a project management course at college. Samantha was excited about the discipline of project management and had intentionally selected a job with Global Green Books Publishing as she saw an opportunity to polish her project management skills. One fine day, Jim invited Samantha, for a lunch meeting. He was aware that Samantha was familiar with project management, and wanted to hear what she had to say about the problems he and Brad were facing. Over lunch, he questioned why their small business which had operated and implemented projects so successfully over the first two years was being challenged significantly now. He specifically listed their problems and asked for input to solve them. Samantha asked for more time to research all the issues but noted that Global Green Books while being innovative, completed projects without a roadmap or a project plan and lacked a disciplined approach to project management. She noted that Jim and Brad did not use any project software for scheduling and they did not use tools or techniques to estimate, budget, or communicate with stakeholders. Finally, they had no processes in place to manage project risks and quality. Impressed with this and other conversations, Jim King asked Samantha if she would consider joining them as a project associate or project manager on a full-time basis to help them introduce project management practices and help them tide over their current crisis. Project Management Plan, Part 1: Project Initiation Phase 1 | Page Samantha accepted the offer! She has several key skillsshe is an excellent communicator with very good interpersonal skills and is detail-oriented. Within the first three months in her new role as PM, she introduced formal project management processes, created a PM manual, and trained the employees to get the work done well. Within nine months Samantha had fully turned things around. Due to proactive risk analysis and risk response planning, surprises, and issues are reduced. Communication with stakeholders was enhanced. Brad and Jim noted that the company was delivering projects on schedule, the quality processes workedand customers were happy with the products! These new employees have a diverse set of skills, backgrounds, and motivations. Their supervisors know how to manage their projects, but do not always have the expertise to step in and do each of the unique tasks assigned to team members. Most of the employees that have been around since the beginning of the eBook business have been trained in their project management techniques, so they can get the work done well; but not all of the newer employees have had this training. There is just too much work that needs to be done to take time out for training. Supervisors need to provide leadership, to provide inspiration for their team, and to be good motivators of their team members, as well as be a good managers, worrying about the day-to-day and minute-by minute accomplishment of the project's goals. Being a good motivator also means that the supervisors must be good listeners to understand what issues are confronting their team members and the needs of their team members. Beyond this role as leaders, supervisors need to be a good manager. They need to identify the skills that they need for their projects. Supervisors at Global Green Books normally do this as they start from the standard job template for eBook projects and build the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) for their eBook project. Next, they need to identify team members that have those skills and work with their current project managers and with human resources to make sure that they will be available to support the new project. Based on the lessons learned analyses, a supervisor might also identify a person as a backup for a critical role on the project, in case they run into difficulties or assigned staff are not available as planned. Once the team is assembled, challenges can arise. Some of the challenges teams face have to do with knowing the status of the work, as part-time employees come in and hand a piece of a project off to another worker. Some deal with managing conflicts as they arise - both technical issues as permissions are delayed and content cannot yet be incorporated, leading to scheduling changes, and interpersonal issues among staff. Some of these conflicts occur between a mostly young, part-time contingent of student workers and full-time employees. Supervisors are often drawn into mediating or resolving these conflicts. They really need to meld together their staff to create highly capable, productive project teams for these fast-paced eBook projects. The staff needs to trust each other and their leadership to be fair and to balance work priorities with the times that they are available. Supervisors are finding it is very important to make sure every team member understands the goals of the project, the roles of each team member and how they inter-relate, and the sense of urgency about completing the project. This urgency comes from understanding the intense schedules for completing Project Management Plan, Part 1: Project Initiation Phase 2 | Page eBooks and from understanding why it is important that all of the work come together to create a finished eBook - any part not completed keeps the final eBook from going into quality check and release. Because of the issues around employee absence and the use of part-time employees, they are also trying to make sure that employees are able to do their role, but can also help out in related roles as needed. To help build a common understanding of the project work and minimize some of the conflicts, Samantha is working with some the supervisors to hold a project kick-off meeting where the team reviews the goals and plan for the project, and develops and agrees to a project team charter. Letting the team develop their charter gives the supervisor an opportunity to observe how the team works together, and gives the team the ability to set ground rules for how they will work together. The team charter starts with the project goals. The team may set their goals in order to accomplish these project goals. Other topics that the team might address in their team charter include agreed-upon guidelines for how they want to participate in the project, conduct (or behavior), communications among project members, communicating status and problems, problem solving, and holding meetings. This charter and its guidelines that they team have agreed to can then serve as a basis for team building and team behaviors during the project. Project Management Plan, Part 1: Project Initiation Phase 3 | Page