Assignment 4 Analysis of the Agency’s Policies, Procedures, a.docx

Assignment 4: Analysis of the Agency’s Policies, Procedures,
and Plans Regarding Unions, Privatization, Pensions, and
Productivity, Part 4
Due Week 9 and worth 220 points
Refer to the Scenario for Assignments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
Write a four to six (4-6) page paper in which you:
Revise the previous assignment based on your professor’s
feedback.
Analyze at least three (3) of the agency’s policies, procedures,
and / or plans regarding unions. (Title this section The Agency
and Unions)
and / or plans regarding privatization. (Title this section The
Agency and Privatization)
and / or plans regarding pensions. (Title this section Employee
Pension Plans)
Assess the agency’s approach to productivity and performance
evaluation. (Title this section Productivity and Performance
Evaluation)
Recommend at least three (3) actions the agency could take to
improve in the areas of productivity and performance
evaluation. (Title this section Recommendations for Improving
Productivity and Performance Evaluation)
Provide at least four (4) relevant and credible outside sources
that support the content of this assignment. (Include no more
than one (1) non-government Website)
Your assignment must follow these formatting requirements:
Be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size
12), with one-inch margins on all sides; citations and references
must follow APA or school-specific format. Check with your
professor for any additional instructions.

Include a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the
student’s name, the professor’s name, the course title, and the
date. The cover page and the reference page are not included in
the required assignment page length.
The specific course learning outcomes associated with this
assignment are:
Examine the major components of the personnel management
system, procedures, and processes in the public sector.
Recommend improvements to processes involved in public
personnel management and / or solutions to problems
confronting those in the field.
Assess external organizational and employee conditions as well
as their implications to and impact on personnel management.
Analyze pertinent issues, such as motivation and productivity,
collective bargaining, labor relations, equal employment
opportunity (EEO), affirmative action (AA), intergovernmental
relations, and / or professionalism, facing public personnel
managers.
Evaluate current and emerging issues and trends in public
personnel management, such as evaluation, public sector
recruitment, staffing employment development compensation,
benefits, pensions, strategic planning, and / or succession
planning.
Analyze pertinent public personnel management issues related
to the federal government and / or privatization.
Develop a proposal for strategic public personnel management
for a specific setting.
Use technology and information resources to research issues in
public personnel management.
Write clearly and concisely about public personnel management
using proper writing mechanics.
Grading for this assignment will be based on answer quality,
logic / organization of the paper, and language and writing
skills. Click here to access the rubric for this assignment.

Scenario for Assignments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5
For Assignments 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 you will take on the role of a
consultant for a government agency. Your consulting firm has
been asked by the agency to research it, interview
representatives within the agency, compile a report, and provide
recommendations for improvement. The first role of the
consultant is to become familiar with the agency, its
departments, and key actors. You will develop the assignment in
five (5) parts, submitting each to your supervisor (your
professor’s role) who will offer feedback for revisions.
Select a local, county, state, or federal agency and a department
within the agency. Usually, you can find contact information on
their Websites.
Assignment 1: Rationale and Analysis for Agency Selected, Part
1 (Week 2)
Assignment 2: Evaluation of Agency’s Public Personnel
Administration, Part 2 (Week 4)
Assignment 3: Agency’s Law and Ethics of Hiring a Diverse
Workforce, Part 3 (Week 7)
Assignment 4: Analysis of the Agency’s Policies, Procedures,
and Plans – Unions, Privatization, Pensions, and Productivity,
Part 4 (Week 9)
Assignment 5: Preparing for the Agency’s Future, Part 5 (Week
10)
After selecting an agency and department, you are expected to:
1. Research the literature regarding issues that involve the
selected agency and public administration in general.
2. Interview at least two (2) representatives of the agency’s
department for the different sections of the paper. (If you can
obtain more than two (2) different interviews, do so. The more
perspectives, the better. Interviews can be conducted in person,
by phone, or by an electronic method such as email.)
3. Develop the assignments in parts, submitting them to your
professor for review and feedback.

4. Revise Assignments 1, 2, and 3 based on your professor’s
feedback.
Note: Guidelines for Interview Assignments at Strayer
University:
(1) Before students engage in an interview assignment, they
must adhere to these Guidelines for Interview Assignments at
Strayer University:
(a) The purpose of the assignment is to train students in
interview/research methods, not to develop or contribute to
research that can be applied to situations beyond that studied or
that is created to share with others beyond the local setting.
(b) No publication of projects containing the results of or
information from the interviews is allowed, including
publication in social media, blogs or the Internet generally. The
interview findings may only be shared in the class.
(2) When presenting the results of their interviews to their
instructor and / or classmates, students may not disclose
personally identifiable information about an interviewee, unless
they have received written permission from the interviewee as
verified by their instructor.
(3) All interviewees must be at least 18 years old.)
Points: 220
Assignment 4:Analysis of the Agency’s Policies, Procedures,
and Plans Regarding Unions, Privatization, Pensions, and
Productivity, Part 4
Criteria
Unacceptable
Below 70% F

Fair
70-79% C
Proficient
80-89% B
Exemplary
90-100% A
1. Revise the previous assignment based on your professor’s
feedback.
Weight: 5%
Did not submit or incompletely revised the previous assignment
based on your professor’s feedback.
Partially revised the previous assignment based on your
professor’s feedback.
Satisfactorily revised the previous assignment based on your
Thoroughly revised the previous assignment based on your
2. Analyze at least three (3) of the agency’s policies,
procedures, and / or plans regarding unions. (Title this section
The Agency and Unions)
Weight: 15%
Did not submit or incompletely analyzed at least three (3) of the
agency’s policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding unions.
(Title this section The Agency and Unions)
Partially analyzed at least three (3) of the agency’s policies,
Satisfactorily analyzed at least three (3) of the agency’s
policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding unions. (Title this
section The Agency and Unions)
Thoroughly analyzed at least three (3) of the agency’s policies,
procedures, and / or plans regarding privatization. (Title this

section The Agency and Privatization)
Weight: 15%
agency’s policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding
privatization. (Title this section The Agency and Privatization)
policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding privatization.
(Title this section The Agency and Privatization)
procedures, and / or plans regarding pensions. (Title this section
Employee Pension Plans)
Weight: 15%
agency’s policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding
pensions. (Title this section Employee Pension Plans)
policies, procedures, and / or plans regarding pensions. (Title
this section Employee Pension Plans)
5. Assess the agency’s approach to productivity and
performance evaluation. (Title this section Productivity and
Performance Evaluation)
Weight:15%
Did not submit or incompletely assessed the agency’s approach
to productivity and performance evaluation. (Title this section

Partially assessed the agency’s approach to productivity and
Satisfactorily assessed the agency’s approach to productivity
and performance evaluation. (Title this section Productivity and
Thoroughly assessed the agency’s approach to productivity and
6. Recommend at least three (3) actions the agency could take
to improve in the areas of productivity and performance
evaluation. (Title this section Recommendations for Improving
Weight:15%
Did not submit or incompletely recommended at least three (3)
actions the agency could take to improve in the areas of
productivity and performance evaluation. (Title this section
Recommendations for Improving Productivity and Performance
Evaluation)
Partially recommended at least three (3) actions the agency
could take to improve in the areas of productivity and
performance evaluation. (Title this section Recommendations
for Improving Productivity and Performance Evaluation)
Satisfactorily recommended at least three (3) actions the agency
Thoroughly recommended at least three (3) actions the agency
1. 7. Provide at least four (4) relevant and credible outside
sources that support the content of this assignment. (Include no
more than one non-government Website)

Weight: 10%
No references provided
Does not meet the required number of references; some or all
references poor quality choices.
Meets number of required references; all references high quality
choices.
Exceeds number of required references; all references high
quality choices.
8. Clarity, writing mechanics, and formatting requirements
Weight: 10%
More than 6 errors present
5-6 errors present
3-4 errors present
0-2 errors present
COMM 310 Reading: Canadian Business Letter Formats
C h a r a c t e r i s t i c s
A common CMAPP product, a business letter tends to have the
following characteristics.
a) It is written communication that is directed from outside an
organization to an audience
within that organization, or from within an organization to an
audience outside it.
b) It may be sent and received on paper (in “hard copy”), but is
often transmitted as an
attachment to an email.
c) It normally contains only text but can include visuals
d) Normally, it does not exceed a few pages.
e) It adheres to standard conventions.

f) It adheres to one of several standardized formats.
H i s t o r y
Imagine it is 1850, seventeen years before Confederation. You
are Lee Pearson, the owner
of a small company in Bytown, a small lumber town at the
confluence of the Ottawa and
Rideau rivers, and the terminus of the recently built Rideau
Canal. (That still frontier town
would, five years later, be renamed Ottawa, and 12 years after
that, become the capital of
the newly created Dominion of Canada.) You need to
communicate with Marcus
Dougherty, the president of a Toronto firm, Upper Canada
Textiles, with whom you have
long done business.
Sitting in your candle-lit office overlooking the Rideau Canal,
you would have taken your
best quill pen, and, perhaps on your best linen paper, would
have carefully hand-written…a
letter! Having closed with a phrase such as, “I remain, Sir, your
humble and obedient
servant, Lee Pearson,” you would have entrusted the document
to the already existing postal
service, and hoped that Dougherty would receive it within the
next week or so.
Both society and technology have changed dramatically since
then—although it may seem
that the length of time Canada Post sometimes requires to
deliver a letter from Ottawa to
Toronto has not decreased significantly… Then again, these
days, most correspondence
would be sent electronically…
People seem inclined to standardize things that begin almost
chaotically. For example, in the
early part of the twentieth century, not every car manufacturer

(of which there were many
more in North America than there are today) placed the clutch
pedal on the far left and the
gas pedal to the right of the brake pedal, or a turn-signal wand
on the left of a steering
column. Over time, however, uniformity of design became the
rule.
This same tendency has given business letters—even when
composed in a word processor
and sent as “bits and bytes”—standard formats and conventions.
But, it is important to
recognize that these conventions are not intrinsically valuable.
Rather, they simply reflect
customs that have grown up and that differ from one part of the
English-speaking world to
another: what is standard in one place may be thought peculiar
elsewhere.
— 1 —
Regardless of other considerations, you want your business
letter to be effective. In most
cases, part of your success comes from not having your
audience notice your use of conventions.
Consider: you receive a letter from a company with whom you
do business. If they have
misspelled your name, that error will seem to leap off the page
at you; it is the first thing
you’ll notice, and it will somehow remain in your mind and
colour your reaction to the
entire message.
Or, the letter’s addressing you as Mr. if you are female or Ms.
if you are male, would

likewise attract your immediate attention and—however
subtly—influence your reaction to
the entire communication, regardless of its content.
Similarly, if you found that sender’s letterhead and your name
and address were not on the
page, but were on a separate laminated sheet, you would pause
and wonder what they were
implying—regardless of the letter’s actual content.
Finally, if their letter closed with “Yours entirely amicably,”
you would be taken aback, and
would likely reread the letter, this time with a slightly
suspicious eye. In effect, you noticed the
conventions, and reacted negatively.
Over the last 20 to 30 years, business letter writers have
exhibited a trend toward less formal
language (a lower level of discourse) and shorter paragraphs
(often of only one sentence).
They have also demonstrated an increasing acceptance of
variation in conventions. And,
remember, those who write business letters do over time mould
the conventions. By way of
example, Lee Pearson’s flowery complimentary close cited
above was then the standard;
today, it would be considered suspect, perhaps “kinky”,
laughable, or, at best, antiquated.
B l o c k a n d M o d i f i e d B l o c k
Two of the common formats now predominating in Canadian
usage are the Block and
M odified Block, illustrated, with explanations as body text, in
Figures 1 and 2 on pages 5
and 6, respectively. Their standard conventions include the
following.
Letterhead
This “return address” for a business (or for a private individual)

is printed as part of the
stationery used for a letter’s first page. (Note that this page
does not normally bear a printed
number; succeeding pages are numbered but bear no full
letterhead.) Typically, it contains
the name of the business (perhaps illustrated with a logo), its
postal address, an email
address, a phone number, possibly a fax number, and probably a
web address. More and
more commonly, it will also include Facebook and Twitter
identifiers. The letterhead’s style
and presentation are up to its creator. When designing a
letterhead, though, you should
remember the CMAPP Complementary Attribute of
Accessibility.
Date
The date the letter was signed must appear; forgetting it can
later prove embarrassing or
problematic.
Use of the “short-date format” 1/3/2011 would, in Canada,
probably be understood as
March 1, 2011, but as January 3 in the United States. More
common in Canada is the
“short-date format” 2011/03/01, which is less likely to be
misinterpreted anywhere. It is,
however, better to write the date in full, sometimes known as
the “long-date format”.
— 2 —
Inside Address
This segment specifies the letter’s primary audience (in CMAPP

terms). While variants are
becoming more acceptable, the following “formula” (without
the + signs, of course)
remains the one least likely to be “noticed”. (Note that
“honorific” signifies an abbreviated
title—today often spelled with or without a final period—such
as Mr, Ms, or Dr.)
Today, many inside addresses derive from various kinds of
contact lists—the renting or
selling of which is a multi-million dollar business. Such lists
often lack honorifics; thus, we
now often see the first line of the inside address bearing only a
first name (or initial) and a
last name. However, many recipients assume such an inside
address introduces advertising,
thereby lessening their interest in the message.
Salutation
A kind of “polite opening”, the salutation should take the
following form:
Dear + Honorific + Last Name:
Note that the convention requires a colon at the end of the
salutation line.
When the inside address contains no honorific, the salutation is
likely to be:
Dear + First Name or Initial + Last Name:
Again, though, some audiences react adversely to this lack of
an honorific.
As business correspondence continues to lean towards greater

informality, we now not
uncommonly see the salutation form above replaced by:
Dear + First Name,
But, some audiences do not feel that strangers should presume
the friendship implied by the
use of first names. And, interestingly, it may not always be
“older” audiences who feel this
way. Thus, you should carefully consider your audience before
making this choice.
Complimentary Close
Showing the end of the “body” of the letter, complimentary
closes now take diverse forms;
however, the three most common—all of which end in a
comma— remain:
Yours truly,
Yours sincerely,
Sincerely,
Note that only the first word is capitalized.
Honorific + First Name or Initial + Last Name
Title
Company
Street Address
City + Province + Postal Code
— 3 —
Signature Block

The signature block contains two elements:
• the signature itself, which, of course, is often quite illegible;
and, immediately below it,
• the signature line, in which the full name is typed, sometimes
followed on the same or on
the subsequent line by a title. Note that a company name does
not appear here: it is in
the letterhead
T h e S i m p l i f i e d F o r m a t
Quite some years ago, the burgeoning North American direct
mail industry needed to deal
with the “gender-specific honorific” problem. The companies
that compiled and maintained
the mailing lists often did not know their audiences’ preferred
honorifics, but it was to their
commercial advantage to offend as few people as possible.
Consequently, the industry
helped popularize a very practical solution: a different letter
format that avoided the
“difficult bits”. This style of business letter is usually called
the Simple or Simplified format.
Figure 3 on page 7 is an illustration of this format, again
explained by the text.
Very little in life carries only advantages; technical
communications is no exception. Along
with its conveniences, the Simplified format—now quite
popular with many organizations in
Canada—carries its own potential “downside.” Perhaps because
the format’s origins lie
largely in the advertising industry, some audiences still view it
somewhat askance, presuming
the letter to be from someone wanting to sell them something.
Again, note the impact of
CMAPP: what you know about your audience should condition

your product.
— 4 —
Figure 1: The Block Format
9999 - 2011st Street.
Langley, B.C. V1V 0M0
(604) 444-4444
April 1, 2011
Ms. Françoise Désormais
Executive Assistant
Radisson Automobiles Inc.
6134 Bank Street
Ottawa ON K2A 2B3
Dear Ms. Désormais:
This letter illustrates the block format.
You will notice that there is no punctuation at the end of any of
the lines of the inside
address—all of which are left flush—and that the two-letter
abbreviation for the province
(Canada Post’s current standard) does not contain periods. As
well, the salutation is followed

by a colon.
You should note the following common conventions.
Body text paragraph spacing (¶) is normally 1¼–1½ times line
spacing. At least three line
spaces separate the date from the inside address, and that from
the salutation. A single line
space—not a ¶ space—lies between the lines of the inside
address. A single ¶ space separates
the salutation from the first paragraph of the body.
The complimentary close is one ¶ space below the last text line,
and (to allow for the signature
itself) three to six ¶ spaces above the signature line. Any
enclosure notation will be one ¶
space below the signature line, and any copy indicator will fall
one ¶ space below that.
Within body text, separate paragraphs by one ¶ space only, and
use only a single space (space
bar) after commas, semi-colons, colons, and periods.
Unless your “house style” requires otherwise, use left (not full)
justification.
I hope you find this information useful and look forward to
receiving your letters.
Yours truly,
P.R. Hayakawa
(Ms.) Pat Hayakawa, Instructor, MIS
Encl.

c. Boris Milkovsky
— 5 —
Figure 2: The Modified Block Format
5827 Dixie Road
Mississauga ON L2J 2J2
(905) 998-9989
April 1, 2011
Mr. Flavio Santini
Senior Consultant
Accelerated Enterprises Ltd.
352 St. Mary Avenue
Winnipeg MA R2R 1M8
Dear Mr. Santini:
You will notice that this letter uses the modified block style.
In this form, the date begins at the horizontal centre of the page.
The inside address and the
letter body use the same format as does the block style.
The complimentary close and signature block—like the date—
begin at centre page.
Attachment and copy indicators will be set flush left, as in the
block style. Use left
justification unless your house style requires you to do

otherwise.
It has been a pleasure answering your questions, and I hope to
hear from you again in the
near future.
Yours sincerely,
Roger Concorde
Roger Concorde
Registrar
Attachment
c.c. Nancy McDiarmid
— 6 —
Figure 3: The Simple or Simplified Format
Newfoundland Office
101 Signal Hill Road
St. John’s NF A1B 9A7
709 843-1147 Fax 709 833-7788
April 1, 2011
T. Trann
General Manager, Radisson Automobiles Inc.
1970 Brunswick Street
Halifax NS B3J 3K6

SPECIFICS OF SIMPLE OR SIMPLIFIED FORMAT
This letter illustrates the simple or simplified format. While it
responds to the possible
problem of insufficient “personal information”, it may also
elicit a negative response—one
that is, admittedly, becoming rarer.
The inside address does not have any required entries
(honorific, initial, etc.). You merely
include whatever relevant information you have. There is no
salutation. Rather, there is a
subject heading, always in FULL CAPs, and normally set off by
three line spaces (not ¶
spaces) both above and below. No punctuation appears at the
end of the lines of those
segments.
This format tends to be set in full rather than left justification.
There is no complimentary close. The signature block begins 1–
2 ¶ spaces below the last
line of body text. Note that the signature line is normally in
FULL CAPs, too. Should there
be reference initials, or indication of attachment or enclosure,
they would begin one ¶
space below the signature line, which is normally set in ALL
CAPs.
I trust this material responds to your needs. Please let me know
if our office can be of
further service.
Leila Berakett
LEILA BERAKETT
ASSOCIATE

— 7 —
CharacteristicsHistoryBlock and Modified
BlockLetterheadDateInside AddressSalutationComplimentary
CloseSignature BlockThe Simplified Format
Feasibility Proposal Report Assignment
This assignment, worth 15% of your course grade, is due for
6:00pm, Tuesday, June 03/14.
General Information
I will provide the outline of a scenario, for which you may
invent any relevant details you wish. Within that
scenario, you will create a report. That report will then become
the basis for your next assignment, due the
following week, the Revised Project Plan, also worth 15% of
your course grade.
Before undertaking this Feasibility Proposal Report assignment,
you might wish to review Chapters 9, 11, and 12
of your textbook, and to at least skim the online items listed
below.
Given the intent of COMM 310, I would expect that this
assignment will deal in some way with
“technology”. Particularly if you do choose a topic related to
IT (Information Technology), you might find it
helpful to look at the software and systems development life
cycle delineated by T. Drewry of the University
of the West of England (Bristol), available May 12/14 at
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/~tdrewry/Lifecycl.htm#TLC,
Regardless of your topic however, you should look at
Recommendation and Feasibility Reports at
http://www.prismnet.com/~hcexres/textbook/feas.html. Within
the context of that website, consider your
Feasibility Proposal Report assignment to be a Feasibility

Report.
You can readily find a lot of online information about creating
feasibility proposals and/or feasibility reports.
Examples include
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060726100055
AAaLjzS,
http://answers.ask.com/Business/Management_and_HR/how_to_
write_a_feasibility_report, and
http://www.ehow.com/how_7928836_write-feasibility-
proposal.html.
If you read such material carefully, however, you will see that
different people have different convictions
about how to create the document, what it should contain, how
long and how detailed it should be, how it
should be organized, and so on. Clearly, there is no single,
correct way to construct one—whatever you actually
call it. Not surprisingly, then, my advice for “the real world”
would be to conduct a CMAPP analysis to
determine what you should actually be generating.
Remember, by the way: once you have finished COM 310, you
may choose never again to let the CMAPP
model enter your consciousness. That’s fine; but, I would
strongly urge you, in that case, to choose some
other model that works, and use it. Don’t simply put all models
aside and assume you can do better without
one. Few people can.
Contrary to many of the examples illustrated in some of the
references above, for this assignment, you will
be constructing a relatively brief feasibility study. See below
for details.
Scenario
The report that you create for this assignment will refer to a
project that derives from this scenario. The
project you choose might reflect an issue in your current job
(see my Note on the next page) or be inspired by

your course work. If neither of those proves fruitful, you may
“invent”.
You work as a consultant, either on your own or employed by a
consulting firm—your choice. A former
client has asked you to examine apparent system-related
difficulties. (As mentioned, I would expect this to be
some kind of technology-related issue.) You therefore conduct
a brief feasibility study.
Now, in a (standard business) letter of no more than three full
pages, write the resulting feasibility proposal
report for the client. Invent all necessary, relevant details. Since
you will be using this feasibility proposal
report for your next assignment, you should keep careful track
of your research.
Page 1 of 3
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/%7Etdrewry/Lifecycl.htm%23TLC
http://www.prismnet.com/%7Ehcexres/textbook/feas.html
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060726100055
AAaLjzS
http://answers.ask.com/Business/Management_and_HR/how_to_
write_a_feasibility_report
http://www.ehow.com/how_7928836_write-feasibility-
proposal.html
Note: If your scenario is a “real” one at your workplace, your
scenario will change accordingly; e.g., you will
use a standard memo rather than a letter, you may not be a
“consultant”, but an employee with a different job
title, your “client” may be your manager, etc.
Specific Requirements—Assignment Particulars
For this assignment, I am setting what I term written assignment
particulars. Let me quote from page 4 of my

Week 1 Posting:
Imagine the following scenario. As a consultant, you have a new
client who contracts with you to create
a business proposal. As part of your discussion of details, the
client says that his company has just moved
into a new building of which they are very proud. He gives you
a flash drive containing a high-resolution
colour photo of the building, and says that he wants you to use a
grey-scale version of that photo as a
watermark on every page of the proposal document.
As you are finishing the proposal document, you realize that the
grey-scale watermark on every page
looks pretentious and unprofessional. You remove it, and, using
the file from the flash drive, create cover
page for the proposal, that includes a full colour, high-
resolution picture of the client’s building. That is
what you present to him.
Admittedly, you might have a client who looks at this and says,
“This is much better than what I had in
mind. Thank you!” However, it is more likely that your client
will look at your document, and say, “This
is not what I contracted to pay you for. I said I wanted a grey-
scale version of the photo as a watermark
on every page. Obviously, you don’t care what the person who
pays you wants; you just do what you
want. I’m not accepting this; I’m certainly not paying you for it;
and, I won’t hire you again; and, you
can guess what kind of a recommendation I’ll give if anyone
asks me about your sense of
professionalism.”
That, of course, is “real life”… And, for several of your
assignments, I will introduce a “reflection” of
the issue of “giving the client what the client wants”. Those
assignments will specify certain details of
content, form, and/or format, which I will label Particulars.

They are not meant to be difficult,
complicated, or unclear; nor do they necessarily represent the
“best” options for the item involved.
Rather, they are meant to reflect “what the client wants”—and
to verify that you, as a professional
communicator, are “paying attention”. The penalty for ignoring
them becomes increasingly onerous:
• for a first infraction, the automatic loss of 10% of the total
available mark;
• for a second infraction, the automatic loss of 15% of the total
available mark;
• for any further infraction, the automatic loss of 20% of the
total available mark.
In “real life”, of course, you should proceed a bit differently. If
you come to believe that following the
client’s instructions will result in a poorer product, you would
contact the client to present your case—
politely and respectfully—and ask how the client now wants
you to proceed. For the assignments in this
course, however, you don’t have that option. Even if ask my
permission not to adhere to an assignment’s
Particulars, I will refuse—not out of stubbornness, but to see
how you deal with “task limitations” that a
client won’t modify; and, recall that in a sense, I’m the
“client”—I’m paying with “marks”…
Here, then, are the five Written Assignment Particulars for this
assignment. You will find reminders of them at
the beginning of the Feasibility Proposal Report Grading Sheet,
available on the course website.
Particulars
1. The assignment must be formatted as a standard business
letter from you as consultant to your client. (If

your scenario is a “real” one at your workplace, the assignment
must be formatted as a standard memo.
See my Note at the top of this page.)
2. The assignment must not exceed four full pages. (I do not
want any kind of assignment “cover page”.)
3. Because it is a letter (or a memo), do not follow APA style.
Apart from the letterhead (or masthead) that
you create, your font should be 11- or 12-point, Garamond or
Times New Roman, left-justified, single-
space text. If you are using a letter, it should be standard block
format. For details, see the file, Reading –
Page 2 of 3
Canadian Business Letter Formats.pdf, available just above the
Week 1 segment on the course website and
referred to in item 6.0 on page 3 of the Course Syllabus.
4. The issue involved must be realistic and practical, and
sufficiently complex to allow for your Revised Project
Plan assignment.
5. The following four headings must appear exactly as indicated
and in the sequence shown.
• Introduction
• Recommendations
• Analysis
• Conclusion
Content
For each of the headings just mentioned, you should include at
least the content described below.

a) Introduction: Provide a short synopsis of the situation, and
the reason for your communication—to your
“client”, not to me.
b) Recommendations: Briefly and concisely (in CMAPP terms),
specify what you think would work and
why. Propose moving ahead to the next phase. Format and
phrase the actual recommendations
appropriately.
c) Analysis: Include an initial, general estimate of the costs
(financial and other) you would foresee,
contrasting them against the probable benefits. Include a
provisional timeline.
d) Conclusion: Summarize very briefly and seek authorization
to proceed.
Page 3 of 3
Feasibility Proposal Report AssignmentGeneral
InformationScenarioSpecific Requirements—Assignment
ParticularsParticularsContent

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