Project Management in Dynamic Environment

1. You manage a hotel resort located on the South Beach on the Island of Kauai in Hawaii. You are shifting the focus of your resort from a traditional fun-in the- sun destination to eco-tourism. (Eco-tourism focuses on environmental awareness and education.) How would you classify the following projects in terms of compliance, strategic, and operational? a.Convert the pool heating system from electrical to solar power. Strategic

b.Build a 4-mile nature hiking trail.
Strategic
c.Renovate the horse barn.
Operational
d.Replace the golf shop that accidentally burned down after being struck by lightning. Compliance
e.Launch a new promotional campaign with Hawaii Airlines.

Strategic
f.Convert 12 adjacent acres into a wildlife preserve.
Operational
g.Update all the bathrooms in condos that are 10 years old or older. Compliance
h.Change hotel brochures to reflect eco-tourism image.

Operational
i.Test and revise disaster response plan.
Compliance
j.Introduce wireless Internet service in café and lounge areas. Strategic
How easy was it to classify these projects? What made some projects more difficult than others? What do you think you now know that would be useful for managing projects at the hotel? It is not very difficult to classify these projects. The financial, such as NPV and payback models, and non-financial criteria would also be useful for managing projects at the hotel.

7. The Custom Bike Company has set up a weighted scoring matrix for evaluation of potential projects. Below are three projects under consideration. a. Using the scoring matrix below, which project would you rate highest? Lowest? I will rate project 5 highest and project 2 lowest, because the score of project 5 and project 2 is 107 and 57, respectively.

b. If the weight for “Strong Sponsor” is changed from 2.0 to 5.0, will the project selection change? What are the three highest weighted project scores with this new weight? Yes, the new project selection will be project 3 and project 2. The three highest weighted project scores with this new weight are 117, 116, and 95.

c. Why is it important that the weights mirror critical strategic factors? The weights should mirror critical strategic factors to contribute to strategic plan and align with organizational final goals.