Application of Project Management Concepts to Planning a 5K Athletic Event

Abstract

University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) is an organization dedicated to teaching students leadership and preparing them to enter the United States Army (Army). Every year within the program, students are given the opportunity to plan and execute events for charity. These events are completed with varying degrees of success. Often, project management tools are not used for planning and executing these events. This project applied concepts of project management to create a guide to planning a charity 5k athletic event by ROTC students and others without prior project management experience. Using project resource management, scope management, and time management, ROTC students and other personnel can use these tools to guide them through planning and executing a 5k event as a practical exercise to test the hypothesis: using these techniques will help an event run more efficiently in terms of resource, scope, and time management. The result of this exercise will confirm or deny the hypothesis and be the basis of lessons learned to add to the guide. Incorporating project management into everyday planning at UAA ROTC must start at the entry level and the outcomes of this project can facilitate building that capability.