Project Related Announcements - Proposal Template and Grading Criteria

Hi all,

Please find listed here a quick 5-7 slide template for submission of your project proposals on PPT. To recap, the project proposal PPT is due in its dropbox by the start of Session 6.

1. Slide 1 - Title Slide
Give the project an informative title and list the names & PGIDs of the team members working on it.
For example, for the problem statement we have in Session 2's construct mapping homework, we could give a title like "Assessing E-tailing's appeal among the young and upwardly mobile" or something like that.

2. Slide 2 - Management problem
Pls give a condensed problem statement describing the essential context of the management problem. For instance, the problem statement used for the questionnaire design homework can be used as a base. Further condense it as required to fit it comfortably onto one slide.
More generally, I would encourage teams to base their management problems on real world concerns. Pick up any business magazine or newspaper and chances are around 10% of the articles may describe problem contexts for specific firms or industries that you could modify and adapt for your project.

Here are a few articles I saw from which management problem contexts can be seen emerging:

(a) The appeal of 3D movies can lead to a survey estimating preference for -> willingness to pay for -> likely demand for movies in the 3D format among a particular target segment. Here's the management problem sourced from the Economist (July 2011) The appeal of 3D movies - Cinema's great hope


(b) Here's an interesting possibility that requires folks to look at reeeally new products - akin to forecasting email's effect on postal services in 1994 - the impact on small-scale manufacturing of 3D printing services. This too is sourced from the Economist (Dec 2011)

(c) Here's a desi innovation that might get a huge fillip in demand as demographics start to favor it. Demand soars for a "House-call doctor services" for the elderly and the chronically infirm. Source is Economic times, 2012.

(d) Here's an interview with the boss of the cafe coffee day chain and he describes some interesting looking initiatives CCD is taking in trying to leverage facebook and other social media to provide speedy feedback on CCD Ops nationwide etc.

And soon. These are merely a few examples. There's no dearth of good management problems to find.

3. Slide 3 - Decision problem
Condensing the management problem to a decision problem (D.P.) is tricky stuff, as we saw in Session 1. Make appropriate assumptions and achieve this step. State the decision problem chosen in clear words. If possible, list also a few alternative D.P. statements that were considered but not chosen.

4. Slide 4 - Research objectives (R.O.s)
Ensure your set of R.O.s "cover" the D.P. in that they address the central question(s) raised by the D.P. State the R.O. in the prescribed format (lookup session 1 slides for this).

5. Slide 5 - Tools mapping
Map the R.O.s onto particular MKTR tools (or sets of tools in a particular sequence). You can refer to the MKTR toolbox for starters but are free to choose tools from outside that toolbox as well. Just to be clear, "tools" here refers to methods or approaches being followed - e.g., the survey method, secondary analysis or experiments are all "MKTR tools" for us.

Important Note:
I understand that as the course progresses and you come in contact with newer tools, you may want to revise your propject proposal a bit here and there. Limited changes to the proposal are permissible. Further, you are free to take any one of the HWs you have done and build upon it, expand it to make your project out of it - perfectly fine. FYI.

*********************************************

In case you are wondering what the grading criteria may be for the project (as that might influence what project you finally choose), then let me outline some thoughts on these criteria based on what I have used in the past. These criteria are indicative only and are not exhaustive. However, they give a fairly good idea of what you can expect. Pls plan such that your chosen problem can yield enough material such that your deliverable of <30 6="" areas.="" before="" beginning="" br="" broad="" doesn="" due="" in="" lack="" of="" slides="" substance="" t="" term="" the="" these="">
(i) Quality of the management problem context chosen - How interesting, relevant, forward looking and do-able it is within the time and bandwidth constraints we are operating under, in the course.

(ii) Quality of the D.P.s chosen - How well it aligns with and addresses the business problem vaguely outlined in the project scope document; How well can it be resolved given the data at hand. Etc.

(iii) Quality of the R.O.s - How well defined and specific the R.O.s are in general; How well the R.O.s cover and address the D.P.s; How well they map onto specific analysis tools; How well they lead to specific recomemndations made to the client in the end. Etc.

(iv) Clarity, focus and purpose in the Methodology -  Flows from the D.P. and the R.O.s. Why you chose this particular series of analysis steps in your methodology and not some alternative. The methodology section would be a subset of a full fledged research design, essentially. The emphasis should be on simplicity, brevity and logical flow.

(v) Quality of Assumptions made - Assumptions should be reasonable and clearly stated in different steps. Was there opportunity for any validation of assumptions downstream, any reality checks done to see if things are fine?

(vi) Quality of results obtained - the actual analysis performed and the results obtained. What problems were encountered and how did you circumvent them. How useful are the results? If they're not very useful, how did you transform them post-analysis into something more relevant and useable.

(vii) Quality of insight obtained, recommendations made - How all that you did so far is finally integrated into a coherent whole to yield data-backed recommendations that are clear, actionable, specific to the problem at hand and likely to significantly impact the decisions downstream. How well the original D.P. is now 'resolved'.

(viii) Quality of learnings noted - Post-facto, what generic learnings and take-aways from the project emerged. More specifically, "what would you do differently in questionnaire design, in data collection and in data analysis to get a better outcome?".

(ix) Completeness of submission - Was sufficient info provided to track back what you actually did, if required - preferably in the main slides, else in the appendices? For instances, were Q no.s provided for the inputs to a factor analysis or cluster analysis exercise?  Were links to appendix tables present in the main slides? Etc.

(x) Creativity, story and flow - Was the submission reader-friendly? Does a 'story' come through in an interconnection between one slide and the next? Were important points highlighted, cluttered slides animated in sequence, callouts and other tools used to emphasize important points in particular slides and so on.

OK. Thats quite a lot already, don't want to spook anybody this early in the course (or later in the course, for that matter). However, let none say that they didn't know how the project would be viewed and graded before making their project proposals.

Sudhir