1. Implementing Project Management Strategies to Enhance Productivity within a Non-Profit Organization
Brooklyn Harper and Destiny Konan
Department of Systems and Industrial Engineering
METHODOLOGIES
BACKGROUND
FINDINGS
Asana
QFD Model
RACI Chart
Statistical Analysis
Earned Value Analysis Report
Interviews
TOPSIS
Surveys .
Mary Parker, the founder of the Women’s Entrepreneurial Empowerment Summit tour, is hosting educational programs in Atlanta, Detroit, and Bradenton in The Women’s Entrepreneurial Empowerment Summit Tour is a two-day lecture and comprehensive business training program for women in business. The purpose of the W.E.E.S tour is to provide information on the steps from ideation to implementation and all phases of business planning, strategizing, and best practices to ensure business success.
The goal of this project is to suggest a structure and process that will improve operational proficiency using Asana, meet the attendees’ service requirements, and to stay within the organization’s budget. The purpose of the investment in Asana was to assist the team with organizing, tracking, and managing their work.   
The planned value (Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled), earned value (Budgeted Cost of Work Performed), and the actual cost (Actual Cost of Work Performed) was calculated using the data collected by monitoring the tasks and the expenses for each one. For 12 weeks we collected and monitor the data. Between week 6 and 7, the organization began implementing Asana. After 6 weeks, the team improved the cost and schedule variance.
N-Ovate Ideals created a R.A.C.I chart as a reference for the 4 staff members in the W.E.E.S organization to use for understanding who needs to be responsible, accountable, confirmed, and informed about tasks within Asana. The zone that is accountable for a specific task is responsible for making sure that the zone that is responsible for completing the task is on track in Asana. The zone that needs to be confirmed about a task, will be expected to either receive or give relevant information to the zone responsible and accountable for the task in Asana. We suggested that the majority of the tasks will be informed to each zone so that communication within the organization will always be consistent within the Asana software.
After the Atlanta Conference, 90 out of 100 attendees were asked for their feedback on how organized the event was and how helpful the staff members were. Our purpose of analyzing these results was to benchmark our quality of how well the staff completed their tasks while staying customer focused after implementing Asana.
DATA
ABSTRACT
N-Ovate Ideals is working with a non-profit organization, The MP Foundation, in an effort to optimize their event project management strategies. This process improvement project seeks to propose the implementation of a web-based project management and collaboration tool, Asana. Implementing this software program will better assist this organization by tracking their project(s) from a centralized visual database. The overall task of this project is to demonstrate how this suggested tool will be able to improve productivity, quality, and cost efficiency in the foundation’s effort to plan and manage projects and events. This recommendation was determined by assessing observations, case studies and analyzing key performance indicators.
RACI Chart for Work Breakdown Structure
CONCLUSION
N-Ovate Ideals recommends that the W.E.E.S organization continue to use Asana for tracking their projects and communicating with the team from a centralized visual dashboard. The team is currently in their learning stages of using Asana, their productivity measurements are fluctuating and quality of service does not meet the standards of the global benchmark. However, the organization has saved money from using this software. We believe that persistence and producing a standardized process within Asana as a strategy for planning and managing their events will gradually improve their productivity, cost, and quality.
OBJECTIVES
Earned Value Analysis Report
The objectives of this project is to demonstrate how well the deployment of Asana impacted the foundations effort in the planning and execution of the WEES Summit in Atlanta. The areas targeted areas include productivity, quality and cost efficiency. The goal is to increase the cost performance index and schedule performance index by 25% and achieve a quality score of at least 85%.
Post Survey Results