Project Management the 2010 Winter Term Paper

The challenges for the project managers relative to protecting the digital rights of the book are tough to counter, outside of creating a special ink that cannot be accurately photographed digitally or scanned. To attempt this strategy of creating ink that is not easily duplicable would have significantly increased the production costs, squeezing margins on the book as it moved through distribution channels. The risks of electronic duplication at this point can only be met with litigation against those distributors who violated the embargo, thereby making it possible for those fans wanting to gain notoriety by posting pages before the book was available to get the attention they want, even if it means ruining to books' value. In summary, the project managers did assess and respond to the risks they could foresee, and outside of significantly increasing the production cost, they did mitigate the larger risks of the books being stolen or hijacked in large quantities. The larger threat of digital reproduction and eventual counterfeiting in Asian nations including China would require an entirely different production process that would increase the costs of the books, an entirely different financial risk the publishers probably don't want to take.

Q3. AIDS is a critical issue in southern Africa. In some countries over 1/3 of the adult population infected with HIV. Kona has recently unveiled the Africa Bike project. (http://www.konabiketown.com/)Specially designed bicycles are provided to healthcare workers. In areas with poor roads and little or no public transportation the bicycles have resulted in a huge increase in the number of patients each worker can visit per day. Identify some of the key stakeholders in this project and the partners that Kona had to involve. What role did the stakeholders play in the design of the bicycles and the Bike Town Africa project? (Also see http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s1-3-12-14517-1,00.html. And http://www.bicycling.com/article/0,6610,s1-3-12-13533-1,00.html

With the mission of serving those patients not capable of travelling long distances across southern Africa including Botswana, the Africa Bike Project was initially founded. This mission of serving others not capable of serving themselves has struck a chord with many companies, who are interested in being stakeholders, while others look to being sponsors given their extensive experience in bicycle production and maintenance.The primary stakeholder, Bristol-Myers Squibb's Secure the Future foundation, is looking to make a humanitarian contribution to the impoverished regions of southern Africa in need of medical suppliers. In conjunction with Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bicycling Magazine also serves as one of the two primary stakeholders. The role of each of these stakeholders is to assist in defining first the logistics of how the bikes get distributed through the most in-need countries, and secondly, the mechanics of the bicycles themselves need to be easily maintained and repaired. The knowledge and expertise of the editors and publisher of Bicycling Magazine fulfil that need of the program.

The partners that Bike Town Africa needed to involve include a combination of medical, bicycling, and governmental ministries to gain approvals to distribute so many bikes in the more geographically dispersed, yet most needy, areas of a nation. Partners essential for the medical advice on which physicians and medical clinics to participate with include CAP AIDS and Secure the Future, with bicycling specialists including Bikes for the World, Continental Tires, Park Tools, Shimano, and the Kona Bicycle Company. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy also needed to specifically be coordinated with as well. The coordination of all these partners required extensive project management, and above all, synchronization to a common goal so the overriding objective of producing reliable, affordable bicycles used in the delivery of medicines could be achieved.

References

Chapin (2007). Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Information Technology Overview. March, 2007. Ward Chapin.

Sutton (2007). Vancouver Olympics 2010's CIO starts training. Neil Sutton. Computerworld Canada. June 14th, 2007. Downloaded July 20th, 2007 from location: http://www.itworldcanada.com/a/ComputerWorld/10cd14aa-3fae-4c01-a7e2-5242397f9a1e.html.....