QSO 340 Module 2 Project Selection Case Analysis example

One Project This Year: Selecting Among Three Proposals at a Composite Regional Food Bank

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

QSO 340: Project Management

Module Two Case Analysis

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

One Project This Year: Selecting Among Three Proposals at a Composite Regional Food Bank

The Constraint

Tri-River Regional Food Bank is a composite nonprofit that distributes about 14 million pounds of food a year to 60 partner pantries from two warehouses. Its small operations and information technology staff can manage only one major project at a time without putting weekly distribution at risk. Three proposals have reached the board, and each has a champion. Choosing well matters because a project that absorbs a year of staff attention, and then disappoints, costs the organization the projects it did not do (Kerzner, 2022).

The Three Proposals

Project A is a warehouse management system that would replace paper and spreadsheet inventory records with barcode tracking of every pallet and let pantries order online. It costs about 640,000 dollars, of which a foundation has offered 480,000 dollars if the project starts this year, leaving 160,000 dollars for the food bank. Staff estimate it would reduce spoilage of perishable food by about 180,000 pounds a year by showing what expires first, save about 2,600 staff hours now spent reconciling counts and cut about 18,000 dollars of fuel through better routing.

Project B is a second refrigerated truck costing 210,000 dollars. It would allow the food bank to rescue about 300,000 more pounds of fresh produce a year from farms and grocers, but it would add about 14,000 dollars a year in fuel, insurance and maintenance.

Project C is an online volunteer scheduling portal costing 45,000 dollars to set up, with a 6,000 dollar annual subscription. It would save the volunteer coordinator about 800 hours a year of phone and email scheduling.

Weighted Scoring

Before scoring, the board and executive director agreed on five criteria and their weights: mission impact, measured by additional nutritious food reaching pantries, 35 percent; net cost to the food bank, 20 percent; risk of failure or disruption, 15 percent; fit with the strategic plan, 15 percent; and readiness, including funding and staff capacity, 15 percent. Fixing the weights before scoring keeps the model from being bent toward a favorite project. Table 1 shows the scores on a scale of 1 to 5.

Table 1

Weighted Scoring of Candidate Projects

Note. Composite scores assigned by the board's planning committee. Higher scores are better; for risk, a higher score means lower risk.

Cash Analysis

The scoring model is complemented by a five-year analysis of each project's cash effects, discounted at 5 percent, the rate on the food bank's reserve investments. Only cash is counted here; food value and mission benefits are excluded deliberately so the two methods can be compared. Project A's cash effects are the food bank's 160,000 dollar share of the cost against about 75,200 dollars a year of staff time and fuel savings, giving a net present value of about 166,000 dollars. Project B has no cash savings to offset its 210,000 dollar cost and 14,000 dollars a year of operating costs, so its net present value is about negative 271,000 dollars. Project C's 45,000 dollar cost and 11,600 dollars a year of net savings give a net present value of about 5,000 dollars (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2021).

Where the Methods Agree and Disagree

Both methods rank the warehouse system first. They disagree about the truck. On cash alone, it is the worst option by far, but on mission it is the second-best, because 300,000 pounds of fresh produce is roughly 250,000 meals of food that would otherwise go to waste. For a business, a large negative net present value would end the discussion. For a food bank, whose purpose is to move food to people rather than to earn a return, it is a cost to be funded, not a reason to reject. The volunteer portal is the opposite case: cheap, low-risk and slightly positive in cash, but with little effect on the mission.

Recommendation

The food bank should undertake the warehouse management system this year. It scores highest on the weighted model, has the strongest cash case, advances the mission by preventing spoilage and fits the strategic plan's goal of offering pantries online ordering. Its timing is also forced: the foundation's 480,000 dollar grant is available only if the project begins this year. Its main weakness is risk, since technology projects commonly exceed their budgets and schedules (Flyvbjerg & Budzier, 2011), so the project plan should include a contingency reserve and a phased rollout. The refrigerated truck should be the next project, with a capital campaign or grant sought now so that funding is ready when staff capacity frees up. The volunteer portal is small enough to be handled as an operational purchase by the volunteer coordinator rather than as a major project, and it can proceed alongside the warehouse system if it requires no information technology staff time.

Testing the Choice

A selection model is only as reliable as its weights and assumptions, so the recommendation was tested two ways. First, the weights were changed to reflect a more cautious board that cares more about cost: mission impact reduced to 25 percent and net cost raised to 30 percent. The warehouse system still scores highest, at about 4.25, while the volunteer portal, at about 3.65, moves ahead of the truck, at about 3.40. The top choice holds even when the weights shift.

Second, the analysis considered losing the foundation grant. Without it, the food bank would carry the full 640,000 dollar cost, and the warehouse system's five-year cash analysis would turn sharply negative, to about negative 314,000 dollars. Its net cost score would fall from 4 to 1, lowering its weighted total to about 3.75, still first but by a much smaller margin than before. This test explains why the grant's deadline matters so much: the case for the project is strong with the grant and marginal without it. The board should therefore approve the project on the condition that the grant agreement is signed before any contract with a software vendor.

References

Flyvbjerg, B., & Budzier, A. (2011). Why your IT project may be riskier than you think. Harvard Business Review, 89(9), 23-25.

Kerzner, H. (2022). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (13th ed.). Wiley.

Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.