Team Charter and Project Summary

Team Charter and Project Summary

Team Charter and Project Summary

Introduction

This course revolves around the creation of a single, significant capstone project. In other words, a project that caps off your learning and your program, allowing you to demonstrate the competencies of leadership and collaboration, ethical and evidence-based decision making, and innovative and strategic thinking. For your capstone, you will either work with a real company or choose a real company to analyze in a way that demonstrates your understanding of the MBA program outcomes. You will turn your analysis of that company into a written report with recommendations and a formal presentation for your intended audience.

Scenario

For this assignment, follow either Path 1 or Path 2. You will use the same path throughout this course. If you have Path 1, Riipen Team, you have already received a notification from the faculty chair. Otherwise, proceed with Path 2, Individual Project. Write your instructor if you have questions. You do not need to do both paths. You will apply one of these scenarios in the Requirements below. Both paths will be graded using the same scoring guide.

Path 1: Riipen Team

To support your work as a team member, as well as the success of your team, your first task is to work as a group to develop a team project charter. A template is provided which covers the areas of Commitments, Team Meeting ground rules, Meeting Guidelines, Meeting Procedures, and Team Member Roles/Responsibilities.

Ensure that all team members have read and watched the preliminary material provided by your instructor about the project organization. You may then wish to specifically consider the following:

Discuss and document the team’s purpose, as well as define a common set of team goals.

Identify, as a group, what the team will do to achieve the goals.

Identify the talents, strengths, and challenges for individual team members, as well as the overall team strengths and challenges.

Identify strategies that will help overcome difficulties or challenges with team members and the project overall.

Discuss and document the agreements and commitments that members make to one another and to the team project.

Designate a project manager for the team.

It is very important that each team member participates fully and seriously considers the content of the team charter. The conversations and agreements that you reach, including the roles and responsibilities that you document in the charter, will become the guideline for helping assess your contributions to the project at end-of-term. It will also help you to hold each other accountable. Every team member is expected to be active in every aspect of project research, completion, and delivery. In Week 9, team members will have the opportunity to provide a peer evaluation and score their teammates; those scores will impact your final capstone presentation (Unit 9) and paper (Unit 10) grade. If all teammates indicate that one person did not participate at least at a 70% level, that learner may not pass this capstone course.

Important: After the team charter is complete and ready for submission to the courseroom, to formalize its acceptance and the agreement to abide by the terms specified, all members must sign the document (digital signing on a PDF is appropriate, as is printing, signing, and scanning back to PDF). Every deliverable is a team deliverable. This means that each person must submit the same team charter for grading that their peers submit. This is not a deliverable that needs to be shared with the client.

Note: The team charter is considered a “living document,” and should be revised as needed during the course if the team member roles and responsibilities change. Remember, the roles, responsibilities, and commitments made in this the document will provide input to the instructor and be used to assess each team member’s performance, as well as the overall performance of the team.

Path 2: Individual Project

For this assignment, you will introduce the organization you have chosen to research, discuss why you chose it, and how it will allow you to demonstrate all of the MBA program outcomes. Having a solid, doable scope is an important part of creating a successful capstone project, and the exact scope is up to you. To help you establish a realistic scope, you will start with the project summary. Be careful to consider the scalability of your project scope, ensuring that it demonstrates your ability to lead in a business environment and showcases your achievement of all MBA program outcomes.

Examples

A scope that is poorly defined:

I want to write a general analysis of the bookseller, Barnes & Noble.

This topic is too broad, and it would probably require hundreds of pages to address all of the possible analyses.

A scope that is better defined:

I want to focus on how Barnes & Noble has managed to survive the Internet age while Borders has crumbled.

What makes this a better scope? The scope is grounded in a problem (such as how to survive Internet competition) or opportunity (such as the area lacking a business that you plan to open), which allows you to focus the analysis.

It must also allow for you to analyze and suggest evidence-based recommendations, takeaways, or actionable next steps as the crux of your project.

Assignment Description

For Riipen team members, complete the Team Charter Template (linked in the Resources) clearly and completely. Include a title page and references page. This should be written in a professional tone, with no spelling or grammatical errors. Refer to the scoring guide to ensure that your work meets the grading criteria for this assignment.

For all others, write a 2–4 page paper, in an academic writing style, that details the topic and scope of your capstone project. Your project summary should be well organized, including an introduction, statement of scope, demonstration of outcomes, and a conclusion. Write clearly and concisely, yet thorough enough for your instructor to provide feedback and guidance. Include the following:

Describe the background of your chosen organization.

Provide a brief introduction of your selected organization to tell the reader what to expect of this summary document, including the business’ background, product lines, number of years in business, organization structure, location, et cetera.

If you choose an organization for which you work, your introduction must include a statement that you received permission to use the company from a supervisor.

Describe a business topic, problem, or opportunity that you intend to research.

Describe the problem or opportunity you see that makes this company a good choice. Ensure that your scope focuses on a specific question that you have, problem you have researched, or opportunity that preliminary research suggests the organization is missing.

Explain the scope of your project by clearly identifying the topics or areas you intend to research.

Explain the level of accessibility to data necessary to examine the chosen business topic, problem, or opportunity.

Address how you will go about obtaining the data.

Identify any special requirements that you might need to meet to access the data you will need.

Explain risks that you think will be encountered and the mitigation plan to manage those risks.

Include at least 1 APA citation for a source that you have used for preliminary research.

Explain how your topic will allow you to showcase your leadership ability by demonstrating each MBA program outcome.

List out each program outcome clearly, and then explain in 3–4 sentences how your topic will allow you to demonstrate each MBA program outcome. The MBA program outcomes are listed in the capstone project description.

Identify specific items of your project summary that you believe demonstrates the outcome.

Wrap up your paper with a clear, concise conclusion that summarizes your plan. Just a couple of sentences is fine.

Submission Requirements

Style:

The team charter should be written in a professional tone.

The project summary should follow the corresponding MBA Academic and Professional Document Guidelines for academic style. It should be double spaced, use subheadings, and be well organized and well written.

Note:This is the only academic formatted paper you will complete in this course. Future papers will use a professional format (single-spaced, et cetera).

Communication:Ensure written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message and quality.

APA guidelines:Format the project summary according to current APA style and formatting.

Resources:Use at least one resource that is a scholarly article or other content found in the Capella library, and one should be from the Wall Street Journal.If using Internet sources, evaluate them appropriately to make sure they are credible resources.

Length:2–4 pages.

Font and font size:12 point, Times New Roman.