Project Milestone 3 (Company Name: Microsoft)

QSO 600 Milestone Three Guidelines and Rubric

Overview: The final project of this course will allow you to demonstrate your ability to analyze a company of your choice that is preparing to add a new product to its existing operation. You will be tasked with developing strategies to mitigate risk regarding the new product launch.

Prompt: For the final project in the course, you will be tasked with identifying the manufacturing requirements, product feasibility, production constraints, profitability, and overall risk associated with introduction of a new product. For this milestone, you will analyze your selected company and offer guidance on how to address potential risk factors associated with the introduction of its new product and how to address the overall financial impact the new product will have on the company. Additionally, you will create a draft of management strategies—an analysis of your selected company—including guidance on how to form and appropriately manage the launch of a new product as well as the team that will be involved in its launch.

Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:

III. Risk and Financial Impact:

In this part of the project, you will analyze your selected company and offer guidance as to how to address potential risk factors associated with the introduction of its new product and what the overall financial impact of the new product will be on the company.

A. Identify potential risks to the company associated with the new product introduction.

B. Develop a risk mitigation plan to address the previously identified risks associated with the introduction of the new product.

C. Explain how your proposed risk mitigation plan will account for and address the previously identified risks.

IV. Management Strategies:

In this part of the project, you will analyze your selected company and offer guidance as to how to form and appropriately manage the launch of a new product as well as the team that will be involved with the launch of the new product.

A. Describe the key aspects and characteristics of the team that you would build to support introduction of the new product.

B. Select the stakeholder from the company that you would include on a cross-functional team to support the introduction of the new product.

C. Explain how your proposed team is cross-functional and how that assists them in supporting the introduction of the new product.

D. Develop a strategy you would use to manage the cross-functional team tasked with supporting the introduction of the new product.

E. Explain how you could apply principles of total quality management (TQM) in managing the product introduction.

F. Describe how you could utilize the total quality management (TQM) approach for fulfilling customer expectations associated with the new product.

G. Explain how each department in the company would approach assessing customer expectations of the product. 

Guidelines for Submission: Milestone Three must be 4 to 6 pages in length (plus a cover page and references) and written in APA format. Use double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, and one-inch margins. Include at least five references cited in APA format.

Grade Rubric is attached as well