Professional Communication Class – Proposal Assignment

Professional Communication Class – Proposal Assignment

Proposal assignment

Write a proposal that promotes ideas for improving the project management communication at your place of work. .

The audience for your proposal is your management. Your proposal can include charts, graphs, tables and photographs. The length should be 1,000 words +/- 10%. Longer is not necessarily better, but it should not be fewer than 900 words and no longer than 1100 words.

Include the following:

1      Detailed descriptions of project management communication strategies as they exist today.

2      Descriptions of project management communication strategies at other places of business (you can research true facts or invent hypothetical information here).

3      Three proposed new options for improved project management communication strategies, showing the advantages and disadvantages of each.

4      Your selection of the best option, which you will support with descriptive, factual evidence.

5      Make sure that your proposal contains all of the following headings, shown below in Components of a business proposal.

Components of a business proposal

A business proposal promotes an idea, suggests actions or asks a potential customer to buy a product or service. A proposal, similar to a report, generally contains a collection of objective data that the reader should consider. But the heart of a proposal, unlike the report, is the recommendation or sales pitch. The report can contain suggestions and recommendations, but its primary purpose should be to present facts and information. A business proposal spends most of its time promoting suggestions and recommendations. A business report spends most of its time presenting objective facts. Proposals propose. Reports report.

Please include all of the following headings and sections in your proposal:

Title Page

Business proposals generally follow a formal structure, unless they are very short email proposals. Most moderate to long proposals begin with a title page. The title page shows the full title of the proposal, the name of the author and the names of audience members or groups.

Abstract or Executive Summary

The proposal should also include an “abstract” or “executive summary.” This brief summary presents the purpose, methods, scope, findings, conclusions and recommendations of the proposal. A high-level business executive might choose not to read the entire proposal, but instead to read only the executive summary. Write the summary with enough detail to provide a busy executive with the most important elements of the proposal.

Table of Contents

The table of contents page usually comes immediately after the title page and before the executive summary. It should show each section of the proposal by name and page number.

List of Figures, Tables, Abbreviations or Symbols (optional)

A good rule of thumb is that if your proposal includes more than five figures, illustrations or tables, you should list them by page number, immediately after the table of contents page. If the proposal contains abbreviations or symbols that might not be familiar to all readers, include those abbreviations and symbols, plus their definitions and explanations in this section. Not all proposals need to contain this section.

Introduction

Start the body of the proposal with an introductory paragraph, with the heading “Introduction.” The introduction should present the purpose and scope of the proposal, and present background information that might be necessary for readers to know so that they can understand the rest of the proposal.

Body

The next heading should read “Body,” and this begins the heart of the proposal. You can include subheadings to introduce the various information categories that make up the body. Consider including tables of data or financial information, charts, graphs and illustrations.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The body of the proposal ends with “Conclusions and Recommendations.” In this section, you summarize the objective data and findings, and propose recommendations, if necessary and appropriate.

Bibliography

If your proposal presents data that you gathered from published sources, show those sources in a bibliography that should include traditional publications, Internet sources and people who you might have interviewed.