Who participates in THEProject?

Student teams comprised of 3 to 6 students from colleges and universities in the Western Michigan area. Although project management tends to favor business, computer science, and engineering curriculums, students of all academic disciplines are highly encouraged to participate.

PMP® (project management professional) certified mentors are assigned to each team.

In addition, there are faculty champions from each school, a core team of WMPMI members covering a variety of competition responsibilities, and a panel of PMP-certified judges.

Why do students want to participate?

THEProject engages college students in the practice of project management, develops their leadership skills, and provides them with a showcase to demonstrate their leadership abilities on stage and in person with business and community leaders from West Michigan.

This competition is an excellent tool to teach real world skills to students, to incite an interest in project management as a career, and to ignite an understanding of how complex problems can be solved and solutions delivered using tools that have been honed in the fires of real-life practice.

Finally, the finalist teams in the competition receive cash prizes. Non-finalists teams may receive prizes in a variety of categories during the awards presentation as well.

What’s the format?

Teams are provided a real-life scenario and must provide solutions in the form of a project plan. The assigned PMP-certified mentors teach them how to transform their solutions into project plans using the initiating and planning processes documented in A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (a.k.a., the PMBOK). Teams have a number of deliverables with due dates to pass through the different Phase Gates. Teams are judged on their use of proper project management techniques, the quality of their solutions, and their ability to present their project plans.

The event day, which usually takes place on the second Monday in April, includes team presentations, other speakers, and the awards ceremony.

If you have any questions, please send an email to THEProject@wmpmi.org

TheProject 2023 Spring Competition

Scenario

Student teams develop a plan to prevent and protect digital infrastructure from a Ransomware attack.

Overview

Recently Virginia State Legislature's IT branch was hit with a Ransomware attack resulting in data loss and interrupting legislation for weeks. As a result of the increasing trend of Ransomware attacks, the Acme Corporation has put out a contract to your team to develop and implement a Ransomware Prevention Plan and put in place a Ransomware Response Plan. The RPP should include enhancing current IT processes, training of IT resources (like clean desk and phishing training) and any desirable certifications for the infrastructure to achieve minimum risk from Ransomware. The RRP should include training for all employees, war line procedures and a desktop planning scenario plan for each year.

To learn more about TheProject 2023 see the details here

For questions please contact Matt Mills, VP Academic Outreach vpao@wmpmi.org

Since 2012

Hosting the collegiate project competition - THEProject archives

To all the students, mentors, school champions,

panelists, judges, and volunteers:

THANK YOU!

The 2021 event was a success because of you!

Check out this year's competion in the booklet below.

This year was the 10th annual competition for the Western Michigan Project Management Institute (WMPMI) collegiate project management competition – THEProject. This year the students tackled a scenario that was straight from the headlines.

Transitioning from brick-and-mortar to remote

or hybrid-school environment

Create a project plan that will protect the university under conditions similar to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Project Plan will take into consideration lessons learned from the current situation and identify opportunities for the following models: Funding, Matriculation, Campus Building, IT Infrastructure, and IT Security.