Case Study:



Project Background:

Currently Colorado State Parks is going through a period of significant transition from being primarily State supported to receiving less than 10% of their support from the State. This is putting increased pressure on the park managers and staff to find ways to increase their park’s sources of revenue. These individuals are already busy making and keeping their parks a wonderful place to visit, so these increased pressures are making their jobs more stressful than they already were.

Tim King, the State Parks Manager of Business Development and Dave Manson, State Parks Controller found out about the possibility of using Leeds School of Business Accounting majors to help their Park Managers. They jumped at the opportunity to provide additional support for the Park Managers. These students are seniors and masters degree students, many of whom have already accepted jobs with the top accounting firms in the world, including Price Waterhouse Coopers, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young.

The students will be focused on first understanding the Park Manager’s information needs in this new environment by interviewing them and their staff (as appropriate), doing research on best practices in this area and designing drafts of new reports that the Park Managers can use to understand who uses their park’s and sources of revenues and expenses. The students will also identify one new revenue opportunity (or improvement to an existing opportunity) for each park. The students will also make recommendations for changes to park performance measures that will provide incentives to the Park Manager and their staff to increase park revenues. We expect that a Park Manager and their staff combined will not need to spend more than 20 hours total through project completion on May 3rd.

The student’s focus will be on the Park Manager’s needs and concerns, not on the Denver office’s. The students will work hard to understand and provide support to Park Managers in the areas of understanding their financial position and designing enhanced reporting capabilities for the Park Managers to use in performing their day to day responsibilities.

Colorado State Parks - Project Financial Reporting

Draft Project Charter – February 26, 2007 – Version 2.0

|Project Purpose: The purpose of this project is to identify and organize the information necessary for park managers to understand |

|their park’s revenue and expense status. |

|Measurable Objectives: |

|Design the reports necessary for park managers to better understand who uses their parks and how they are using them |

|Design the reports necessary for park managers to better understand their sources of revenue and expense and financial status |

|Park managers will know how to use these reports to determine their park status |

|Park managers will have electronic access to these reports so they can do demographic and financial analysis for their park |

|Identify at least one way to incent park managers to improve park financial sustainability |

|New reporting process should be easy to use by park employees (can learn how to use it in less than one hour) |

|New reporting process should not require any additional staff resources to implement at each park |

|Identify one new revenue opportunity for each park (or improvement on an existing revenue opportunity) including support for why |

|this opportunity makes financial sense to pursue |

|Project Manager Authority: (this needs to be thought through more, especially as it relates to the relationship with each park |

|manager) In order for this project to be successful, each project manager will have the authority to: |

|Determine the project approach, including milestones; deliverables; and schedule |

|Determine project resource requirements, including funding, people and equipment |

|Determine how to allocate/reallocate project resources throughout the project |

|Fire project team members |

|Identify and communicate directly with all project stakeholders as the project manager sees fit |

|Determine which recommendations to pursue if the project sponsor/project stakeholders do not provide this feedback within three |

|business days of it being requested |

| |

|The project manager does not have the authority to do the following without first getting the project sponsor’s approval: |

|Cancel the project |

|Increase project funding beyond what is approved in the project plan |

|Project In-Scope: |

|Report mock-ups |

|Sample data for use in mock-ups |

|Process to capture data for reports(this can include the iron gate) |

|One revenue opportunity for each park |

|Project Out-of-Scope: |

|Entrance Automation Project (other than identifying potential new data that needs to be captured by this system) |

|System-wide reporting |

|Implement the revenue opportunities or improvements |

|Collect data for production reports |

|Reporting process and procedures are only for the park not the Denver office |

|Implement reports in State Parks Systems |

|Parks we are not working with this semester |

|Project Assumptions: |

|We are the friends of the park managers looking to help them get the information they need to be successful in their jobs. In |

|particular during this time of transition to being financially sustainable. |

|We narrowed the scope from the original list to make sure that we could deliver a quality product that was reasonable given the |

|time constraints, knowledge of the organization, class focus and our level of experience. |

|Deliverables: |

|Issues identified by Park Managers |

|Financial and management reporting mock-ups |

|Reporting data capture process map and procedures |

|Data model (either update the current PARKS model or develop a new one for these report requirements, TBD) |

|Revenue opportunity/improvement |

|Presentation |

Approved by:

Project Sponsor: Date:

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