The project manager for American Constructors Inc. (ACI) sat down with his team on September 24, 2009, to evaluate the progress of its building expansion project in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The team had been working on the World Outreach Church expansion project for over a year already and it was nearing completion. Originally scheduled for completion by March 2010, the project deadline was pushed ahead to December 14, 2009, at the request of the client, who desired to use the property for the Christmas season. In an effort to maintain the reputation of ACI, which had grown to be known as a premier contractor in Tennessee, the project manager and his team needed to determine if the December 14 deadline was feasible.
It was June 5, 2008 and the senior promotions coordinator was beginning to feel the pressure of managing a major sponsorship event for the Toronto Sun, a daily newspaper publication in Ontario, Canada. She had recently been hired and had received the responsibility of organizing the Toronto Sun's presence in the city's annual Caribana Parade after her colleague failed to make any progress following months of handling the assignment. With only eight weeks until parade day (August 2), she felt challenged to make the company's float a success. The Toronto Sun earned its place in the parade as the primary print media sponsor for the event. Pulling the company's float from the biggest parade event in the city would mean forfeiting valuable marketing exposure. This case was designed for use in an undergraduate or MBA operations management or introductory project management course. Developed to aid instructors in facilitating discussions of key project management concepts, the case content allows for an analytical approach to covering the basic skills in planning a project, including precedence relationships, critical path, due dates, uncertainty (PERT tasks), crashing, etc. It can be used to teach students MS Project or other project management software. It can also be used for a less analytic, more managerial discussion of project management.