Olympic and paralympic games

The Olympic and Paralympic Games are the world’s largest peace-time event. The modern Olympic Games were first held in Greece in 1896 and since 1960, the Paralympic Games have provided athletes with disabilities with the opportunity to compete at the highest level. All athletes are encouraged to live by a set of shared principles -the Olympic and Paralympic Values of friendship, equality, respect, courage, determination, excellence and inspiration.

The Games are held every four years in a different city and in 2012 London will be hosting the Games. London started the bidding process to be a host city in 2003. Over two years the bid team put together a plan to show how the London Games would be staged. The team presented the plans to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Singapore in 2005, along with four other competing cities. After evaluation, the IOC voted for the city that they felt was the most suitable to host the Games in 2012. London received 54 votes in the final round compared to the 50 votes awarded to Paris and so became the host city.

The London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has been set up to take responsibility for planning, organising and delivering a memorable Games in 2012. This is a huge task. The £2 billion needed to organise and run the Olympic and Paralympic Games has to be raised by LOCOG from the private sector. This is achieved through selling sponsorship, merchandising, broadcasting rights and tickets for events.

The London 2012 Games will bring together more than 14, 000 athletes from 205 countries. Spectators and sports enthusiasts will buy nine million tickets and billions of people around the world will watch the event on TV. Ensuring everything runs smoothly is a tough challenge and LOCOG cannot do it on its own. It has to work closely with many partners and stakeholders to make it happen. This case study shows how creating a clear vision and set of values has made it possible to establish clear objectives for delivering an unforgettable Games.

A. Objective:

Your group has been chosen to write the software required to manage the London Olympic Games 2012 – from sending invitations to the participating countries/ teams , managing the facilities, tracking the events , recording the results and finally keeping track of the results and the performance of the participants etc.

B. Your Tasks and Deliverables:-

1. Identify the major tasks to be carried out.

2. Identify the order the tasks have to be developed. Can some tasks be done in parallel (at the same time) or serially (one task must finish before the next task starts) and break down the major tasks to the lower levels (as far as work package).

3. Identify any special tasks (tasks which need specialists).

4. Identify any major risks that could affect the delivery of the project or cause to exceed the project budget, time scale or increase the required resource. Construct a risk assessment table that will rate the impact of each risk that you identify. Recommend ways to provide for the risks after a careful analysis.

5. Use your initiative to determine how long jobs take to Include the critical path analysis to demonstrate the beginning to end of the project and identify where there may be problems. Include the milestones.

6. Determine the labour costs and provide a WBS containing these costs. The WBS should also content a set of estimates that are mirrored on the WBS and should be capable of ‘ rolling-up’ to demonstrate the overall cost of the project and the individual cost of each sub deliverable.

7. Use the different project evaluation techniques done in the class to evaluate the economic feasibility of the project.

8. Consider all the strategic issues arising out of the project success( and failure !)

9. Consider all the technical issues arising from this project.