All systems go!

This week was a good step in the process of completing our project. Our formal project proposal came together very nicely. After discussing the proposal in detail in class, Kevin and David met to work on writing the proposal. They emailed me the document with a couple sections for me to complete. I wrote the sections which required a more technical knowledge of the specification of our project as they were laid out by our client, because I’ve had one more meeting with him than my other group members. The Gantt chart looks good and gave us a solid timeline to stick with to ensure our timeliness and it gives our client a clear picture of when we will be delivering what to him.

Speaking of our client, upon completion of the proposal and approval, we presented it to Mr. Kevin Kerkhoff, our client, on Wednesday, April 9. He was very pleased, and is excited to see our final product. It will be arriving to him about a week before he had planned to begin tackling the task himself (April 21), which means our project will indeed be a great help to him. He seems to be pleased with the way we are handling ourselves and the project thus far, and he is eager to provide any materials we need. For example, he emailed two logos to us for our use in making the documents more tailored to Greyhouse Coffee & Supply Co. His biggest concern was the format of the final deliverable, so that is mainly what we discussed when the proposal was delivered. Eventually, our document will be part of a larger, training and orientation program, and the materials will be printed and put in binders for each employee. However, it is likely that more information sheets like the ones we create will be completed as they realize the need for training their staff in different areas. For this reason, the more crucial part of our deliverable will be electronic versions of our work – not so our work can be edited (though some minute editing may take place to ensure all Greyhouse management that they are fully representing themselves as they want), but so our work can be used as a template for future document creation in the future.

Our division of labor has been broken down as such that each of the three of us will write the copy for three of the sections we are completing. This makes our research from here on out an individual thing and we all have all the sources we need to do that. Upon completion of the text, we will meet back together to edit the text into a cohesive document, and create a visual layout which will be consistent throughout the packet. Again, Mr. Kerkhoff will remain a valuable source and has offered to answer any emails or phone calls to address specific questions about what material should be covered in any specific question.

With approval completed, we move now to work individually on different sections of the rough draft now. We still have a large undertaking on our hands, but it feels manageable, and I feel like we are on the right track.