Project Plan

Ashaya Rana
Drew Patrick
Eren Arbac September 24, 2017
Ling Zhu MGMT 310A
Katie Lista
Solenna Vaucheret

S.M.A.R.T. Goals
In order to plan accordingly, we will meet about three to five hours per week. This will
allow us to remain on track with the assigned work, while also consulting with each
other on our project plan. As we proceed on developing information from researching
Microsoft Corporation, we have identified two issues regarding career stagnation and
employee stress. This demonstrates how even Microsoft, a major company, is
susceptible to experiencing managerial limitations. By November 17th, our team will
have completed our report discussing the main problems while developing solutions that
will improve the quality of the work area. These solutions will involve applications to
relieve stress and reduce competition within the workplace. By the end of the project,
our overall goal is to create a final presentation by November 19th, however, we hope to
achieve individual tasks in between our team progress. For instance, we will conduct
over-the-phone interviews and gather research questions for current and former
employees consisting of 15 questions by October 10th and officially have the interviews
completed by October 15th. These interviews will present important employee insight
which will be vital for our research to fully comprehend the identified issues. Along with
conducting interviews, we plan to find additional research through online databases.
Individual responsibilities will need to be completed by November 6th to begin to
assemble our team report. Once perfecting our report by November 13th, we will begin
practicing for our team presentation to put together a strong professional performance.
After all of this is accomplished, the presentation will be read for recording on November
19th and turned in on D2L by November 20th at 9AM.

Plan for collecting data

Since Microsoft is such a large company, our team figured it would be ineffective to call
customer service to try to speak with an employee. Our group has successfully
managed to find two employee connections in different departments of Microsoft. We
also connected with an employee who is no longer working for the company. As a group
we will contact each of our three total connections within Microsoft to schedule a time to
conduct a phone interview. Our team should be able to get a wide variety of opinions,
which will be extremely beneficial in providing an all encompassing analysis of the
Organizational Behavior of the company. Our connections include Dave Reik, a former
marketing manager, Ryan Schumacher, a current software engineer and Victor
Casalino, a current general manager of finance core services engineering and
operations. We will use the same questions when interviewing each of our connections
so that we can easily compare the individual narratives of the company. After analyzing
all the interview responses, we will note any similarities that signal company issues.
Externally, we will look at reviews of products and the customer service at Microsoft to
gain a consumer viewpoint of how they are performing since the internal opinion could
be different from the external opinion. From all of this research our team will gain a full
understanding of what is working and what is failing in Microsoft.
.
Example Questions for Interview
Employee
How long have you worked at Microsoft?
What is/was your specific role?
Could you tell us about the atmosphere of you workspace? Ie: were people
always stressed, laidback, friendly, uptight, concerned about work stability, ect
Were you often stressed?
Does your job vary day-to-day?
What was the inconvenience while working at microsoft/ what would often upset
you about your responsibility?
What did you like most about your job?
Was it easy to grow within the company?
Do certain departments face more of a challenge for career growth/progress than
other departments?
Does microsoft use techniques such as job rotation or job sharing to allow
flexibility?
If there are instances of job stress and career stagnation, how do you address
these issues?

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)