Module 01 Course Project – Company Selection

  
The course project is a strategic management plan for an organization of your choosing.
Now it’s time to select a company that you’d like to use for the course project. It’s important that you choose a company that is easily researched. You’re going to need to find information on their current business practices and makeup. That can be very hard to do with small local businesses, but easier with larger publicly traded companies. It’s also important to choose a company that you’re interested in and want to learn about. This will make the project more engaging.
For the assignment this week, write a paper that’s at least a page in length and completes the following:

Identify a company for which you wish to develop a strategic management plan. You may wish to conduct some preliminary research to help you understand a little more about the company you chose.
Provide a brief description of the company including what they do, what they’re known for, and their reputation within the current business environment.
Provide your reasons for selecting this company. Be thorough and specific with your explanation.

Project Overview
Throughout this course your ability to draw upon current and prior business management knowledge is key. Using this knowledge, you will create a strategic management plan of an organization of your choosing, while focusing on developing an effective executive summary. Halfway through the project you will need to set original strategic goals for your chosen company to accomplish. The second half of the project will then focus on budgeting and planning for the completion of these goals.

A strategic plan is really a road map for the future of a business. It provides guidance and direction for all aspects of an organization in support of the company’s goals. It draws upon all areas of business including human resources, marketing, IT, and finance, and even looks at the external influences and the competitive marketplace. It requires you to pull together everything you learned throughout your course of study as well as incorporate current and relevant research.
Due Date
Your final project is due in Week 6. There will be individual assignments, sometimes two in a week, along the way. The week they are due is noted in the time line below.
Time Line
Week
Assignment
01
Company Selection; Ethics and Creating a Mission Statement
02
Internal and External Analysis; Market Analysis
03
Human Resources Strategy; Budget Estimates
04
Technology Allocation; Implementation Timeline
05
Control and Evaluation Methods; Executive Summary
06
Reflection; Final Project Submission
Requirements
Your project is built in stages throughout the course as noted in the timeline above. As you move on to the next stage, be sure to revise your work based on instructor feedback. This is important because week 6 will require you to compile all the previous portions of the project, revise them, and then turn in a completed strategic management plan.
For many stages of the project you will need to conduct additional research. As you do remember:

Use statements and ideas that you have come up with on your own and blend these with your research. Do not plagiarize. If you want to use actual words from a source, put them in quotation marks and include the source.
Follow APA format only for citing your sources. For APA guidelines, go to your college’s Online Library which you can access through the Resources tab.

Evaluation
Each assignment leading up to the final paper is evaluated and graded independently. Your instructor will provide specific grading criteria for each step of the project prior to its due date.
For Further Questions
If you have any questions throughout this project, please ask your Instructor. Post ideas and questions for your classmates in the General Course Questions forum in the Getting Started folder of this course.