Case Study
Lightning Fast is a popular theme park, resort, and zoo which is set in the rural surrounding area of Warwickshire, England. The park covers 380 acres and accumulates over 1 million visitors each year. The park opened in 1975 and since that time, has built some very famous attractions which attract visitors from around the world. The most famous attraction is “Lightning Rod” which is a multi-million pound roller-coaster and the only one in Europe to travel at 150mph, allowing people to twist and turn at 4.3 Gs whilst hanging upside-down.
Lightning Fast has over 100 animals in its 20 acre zoo and also hosts a variety of special events including firework displays throughout the year. The park was founded as a family business and has won several awards including: “UK Attraction of the Year” 2009, “Outstanding Contribution to Tourism Award” and a Certificate of Excellence from TripAdvisor in 2014.
Assignment Question
You are a Project Manager at Lightning Fast and have been tasked with project managing a small team to create a brand new roller-coaster experience! Your goal is to ensure visitors have an amazing experience by delivering a successful project, whilst creating business “value” for Lightning Fast.
Recent visitor surveys have reported that a new “thrill” roller-coaster ride is needed to entertain adults and children over the age of 15 years which will provide an alternative ride to the Lightning Rod rollercoaster. Senior management at Lightning Fast want the new roller-coaster to have at least one unique feature that will be a differentiator to UK competitors such as Alton Towers and Legoland.
This assignment requires you to produce a report (1500 – 2000 words) for the new roller-coaster ride which addresses the following:
Part A (500 words):
1. Critically review your own ability (strengths and weaknesses) to manage projects in general. This section can be written in either the first-person or third-person – your preference – and is not based on Lightning Fast.
Part B (1500 words):
Devise a project which outlines a new roller-coaster ride that addresses the following:
1. Traditional, Agile, xPM and MPx considerations
2. The five stages of a PMLC (project management life cycle) model for the project
3. Any project planning considerations & an outline of how you would manage and control the project
4. Project risk management & managing any potential scope creep
5. Project stakeholder management & managing client expectations
6. How you would close the project and transfer any relevant learning to future projects
7. Create a simple precedence table with up to ten project tasks, a Network Analysis chart and a Gantt chart in Project Libre for the new roller-coaster ride using Project Libre. Copy these two Project Libre charts and your entered Project Libre precedence table into your assignment. Ensure the critical path is identifiable in your Network Analysis chart.
Tips: Given the word count restrictions – please introduce the roller-coaster project in no more than 50 words. Remember to add a conclusion to critique Part A and Part B.
The learning outcomes for this assignment are:
Develop the unique criteria that an individual project would be measured against known benchmarks
Apply understanding of the concepts of project closure to project management
Apply understanding of project management concepts and software to define, implement, and modify projects.