Management Case Study: Adventures Unlimited
South American Adventures Unlimited
1.
The project management could play a critical role in operating the business of Adventures Unlimited. ‘A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result’(Larson and Gray 2010). In this case, each tour organized by Adventures Unlimited could be a project as they have an established objective on organizing and leading outdoor activities in Central and South America. Each trip has a defined life span with a specific beginning and ending date. Adventures Unlimited also recruits several experienced, professional people for supporting its administration and planning trips based on trip-by-trip contracts. In addition, this company used suggestions from its customers to organize future trips, this would lead every trip to be new and more desirable for customers compared to the previous one. Therefore, each tour has done something new on organizing the excursion to Central and South America. And apparently, there are specific costs for each tour, such as the transportation fees, advertising fees on the Internet and travel magazines. Besides, each trip follows a standard project life cycle through a defining stage, a planning stage, an executing stage and a closing stage on evaluation by customers’ suggestions. Therefore in this case, organizing and executing each tour could be seen as a process of project management. Adventures Unlimited has already taken advantages of a dedicated project team organization on providing an effective and cross-functional management.
2
The Rodríguezes, the administrative staff, and tour guides could improve the operation of Adventures Unlimited through training in project selection, scope management, cost management, risk management, communication management as well as quality management.
The portfolio management could oversight the project at the organization level. One of its functions is overseeing project selection. In this case, the Rodríguezes can
1.
The project management could play a critical role in operating the business of Adventures Unlimited. ‘A project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result’(Larson and Gray 2010). In this case, each tour organized by Adventures Unlimited could be a project as they have an established objective on organizing and leading outdoor activities in Central and South America. Each trip has a defined life span with a specific beginning and ending date. Adventures Unlimited also recruits several experienced, professional people for supporting its administration and planning trips based on trip-by-trip contracts. In addition, this company used suggestions from its customers to organize future trips, this would lead every trip to be new and more desirable for customers compared to the previous one. Therefore, each tour has done something new on organizing the excursion to Central and South America. And apparently, there are specific costs for each tour, such as the transportation fees, advertising fees on the Internet and travel magazines. Besides, each trip follows a standard project life cycle through a defining stage, a planning stage, an executing stage and a closing stage on evaluation by customers’ suggestions. Therefore in this case, organizing and executing each tour could be seen as a process of project management. Adventures Unlimited has already taken advantages of a dedicated project team organization on providing an effective and cross-functional management.
2
The Rodríguezes, the administrative staff, and tour guides could improve the operation of Adventures Unlimited through training in project selection, scope management, cost management, risk management, communication management as well as quality management.
The portfolio management could oversight the project at the organization level. One of its functions is overseeing project selection. In this case, the Rodríguezes can