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Identify the problem: The case notes a number of challenges facing the festival. When

identifying the primary, fundamental problem(s) articulate an overall problem

statement that is inclusive of all the challenges

A project is any undertaking, carried out individually or collaboratively and possibly involving

research or design, that is carefully planned usually by a project team, but sometimes by a

project manager or by a project planner to achieve a particular aim. A project has a

beginning and an end. Based on the text, the first problem AWC had is that it was

incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1989 and was not permitted to organize as a

registered charity. Another problem observed in this case is that the organization´s prime

intention was to expand their project so as to increase their revenue however, the capacity to

expand was ineffective as celebration were poor. The ¨problems can be summarised as

ineffective planning, time, capacity(people) and resources.

Diagnose the cause(s): The case recounts a number of things that have gone wrong in

past festivals. Identify the core, underlying cause(s) that would explain all of these

failures

In order to diagnose this case, it will be necessary to look at the most important event and

the revenue performance of AWC. Talking about the most important event, Duck Decoy

auction was one of the most important events which earned AWC a ten percent commission.

More so, according to statistics, AWC´s revenue had been declining such that the chair of the

board of directors and Carol, managing director decided to expand their celebration so as to

increase revenue.

To further diagnose the problems, AWC faced another issue when two of its executive

committee members decided to leave Sackville and also the celebration of 1994 did not hold
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as planned (Fullerton, 1995). Perhaps the greatest disappointment and the most

embarrassing shortcoming of the 1994 AWC was the cancellation of the Duck-Calling

competition at the very last minute (Fullerton, 1995). Another diagnosis here is that the 1994

AWC was held on the same weekend in August as the Acadian Homecoming, held in many

francophone communities in south-eastern New Brunswick. As explained by the organisers,

they had expected to have more visitors, but that was not the case.

Prescribe possible alternatives: Are the alternatives structural in nature? Or are other,

non-structural alternatives available?

The AWC was created a non-profit organisation but has been benefiting from some

corporate sponsorship which has been decreasing in the years. In order to improve their

financial situation, one of the alternative was to scrap the few dollars they spent on radio

advertisement. Another alternative which was implemented by the committee is that they

raised the price of a three-day pass from $14 to $25 and the price of a day-pass from $7 to

$10, like wise eliminating individual event tickets (Fullerton, 1995).

Recommend a plan of action (decision/implementation): What part of your plan of

action is structural in nature? Are there non-structural recommendations? Referring to

Chapter 1 of Project Leadership – Step by Step: Part I, is this case about a

small/medium-sized project or something larger? Does your response to the case

change, based on the size of the project?

One important aspect of project management is managing people. It is the responsibility of

the project manager to make sure that they have the right people at right place. Putting all

things together, a plan of action here is that the AWC has always organised their celebration

where it is almost the only celebration in New Brunswick. But unfortunately, in 1994, AWC´s
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celebration was held in the same weekend as the Acadian Homecoming, held in many

francophone communities in south-eastern New Brunswick. This time around people decided

to attend the Acadian Homecoming instead of AWC celebration. An option for AWC would

have been to reschedule their celebration at a later date.

State the importance and relevance of the case to the study of business.

The importance of this case in business study is project management. Project management is

the use of specific knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to deliver something of value to

people (Project Management Institute , n.d.). It teaches us that a project management has

five stages which must be efficiently managed and there also risk involved which must be

taken in to consideration.

References

Fullerton, G. (1995). Atlantic waterfowl celebration.

Project Management Institute . (n.d.). Retrieved

from www.pmi.org: https://www.pmi.org/about/learn-about-pmi/what-is-project-

management