Debbie Marshall PM587 Case Study October 9, 2011

MEMO To: Re: Date: Alex Completion Date of project August 15, 2011

Alex, After receiving the requirements, I put a project plan together. Based on the information provided, it appears that the project will take approximately 5 months to be complete with a start date of August 31, 2011. This will include testing, preparation, and analysis, testing and preparing the final findings into a report. In order to meet this deadline, the tasks must be kept on schedule, if any of the tasks on the critical path change, the end date will be impacted as well as the overall cost of the project.

Section 2 MEMO To: Re: Date: Alex Update of project October 9, 2011

Hi Alex, Nutro Balance currently has a successful line of weight loss supplements and nutritional snacks. A few years back they introduced a weight loss supplement targeted primarily to men, known as, Ultra. Ultra is geared towards men who lift weights, and do cardiovascular exercises regularly and has become very popular. By using the Ultra formulation and targeting the female segment of the workout population we have decided to invest in a pill called, Ultra MAX. The core product, Ultra has already been product; therefore the end results will be seeing if UltraMAX works well for women as Ultra does for men. The project begins on August 31, 2011 and we were given about 5 months to complete the entire project. This included identify consumers, test the product, analyze the results, test the results and prepare reports of our findings. After producing our allocation reports for resources we have determined that one of our resources will be over allocated through the timeline of this project. Therefore, we felt we needed to do some resource leveling. By doing this however, we are extending our deadline of the completion of the project. Based on the reports that we ran, it appears Robert is going to be maxed out on workload and we felt it was in the best interest of the project to level our resources. By leveling our resources we will ensure our demand on resources does not exceed availability. The end result will be the project has to be extended out. By reviewing the critical path we can determine where there is slack, however, we don t feel that it would be beneficial to the project in the essence of time. One other aspect that needs to be considered is also holidays, sickness or unforeseen circumstances of missing time for our resources. This could ultimately impact our schedule.

Section 3 MEMO To: Re: Date: Alex Executive Summary November 15, 2011

To: Alex With the success we have endured from Ultra, our weight loss supplement for men, NutroBalance felt we could achieve a higher success by formulating a Ultra pill targeting other areas of the workout population. By using the current formulation we have decided to invest in a pill known as UltraMAX, which will be targeted specifically for the female demographics. This project is already building off a stepping stone from the pill Ultra. Therefore the main focus of this project will be to see if the results achieved are good and expected as well as how the pill is perceived.

As of now we have identified our target customers, recruited test subjects and have completed the screening process of these subjects. This process, unfortunately took a little longer than expected due to unforeseen circumstances for one of our resources. This set up back for a few days which resulted in the project being pushed out a few more days. We reviewed our resourcing and critical path, we feel that increase our IT programming by bringing in another programmer we could cut down time for the input and analysis of the data and preparing the final report. This would become an additional cost however but will also save us time as Lisa will not be the only one inputting and analyzing the data. We feel also that with the workload that Robert has we can employ a contracted employee to assist with the menial tasks that will allow Robert to focus more intently on the difficult aspects of creation and preparation of the product. Another idea we have pondered is having Sarah assist Robert as she s familiar with the product, her resources ended up being under allocated as she missed time due to unforeseen circumstances. Again, this may be an additional cost that we will need to endure, however it will prove to be incredibly beneficial and will allow us to be back on track and ensure on-time production. A thought that our team had was if we employ a contractor, we are risking quality as they are not as familiar with the project or our process. Therefore, the suggested idea is to use Sarah for assistance with Robert and the development phase.

If we can remain on target and have our resources leveled and assigned accordingly and brought back to the critical path tasks only, we will have a completion date of March 9, 2012 and a total budget of

$72,680.00. This is a realistic target date that is going to be a good time for people to become introduced to the product. With summer around the corner, many people will want to get out and work off that winter weight . By introducing the product in the springtime, we feel that sales will be profitable due to the increase in wanting to exercise and be ready for summertime.