| Course | PM 350 Organizational Project Management (PM/350) |
|---|---|
| Week | 4 |
| Paper type | Financial and operational practices analysis |
| Length | about 1,017 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | BS in Business |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PM 350 Week 4
Does the App Pay for Itself? Financial and Operational Practices Behind a State Lottery's Strategic Projects
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
PM/350: Organizational Project Management
Week 4 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The Prairie State Lottery, its projects, cash flows and rates are composites written for a model paper.
The Prairie State Lottery, the composite Topeka agency followed through PM 350, transfers its net proceeds to state funds, so every dollar spent on a project is a dollar not transferred unless the project earns it back. Until this year, the agency approved projects on a one-page request listing hoped-for benefits. The new portfolio office now requires a business case for discretionary projects. This paper evaluates the financial practices used to choose and control the lottery's projects, using the proposed mobile second-chance app and the required terminal replacement as examples, and then examines the operational practices that determine whether delivered projects keep their value.
Why Financial Discipline Matters Here
A state lottery's purpose is to raise money for the state responsibly. Projects that add costs without adding transfers or protecting integrity work against that purpose. Graham and Harvey (2001) surveyed chief financial officers and found that large firms leaned most on discounted cash flow tools, chiefly NPV and IRR, with many smaller firms also relying on payback. Public agencies can use the same tools, with a discount rate that reflects the state's cost of borrowing.
Testing the App's Business Case
The marketing division proposed a mobile app that lets players scan non-winning tickets for entry into bonus drawings and receive offers. Its request claimed the app would raise sales by 2 percent. The portfolio office rebuilt the case with these assumptions:
Initial cost: $900,000 for design, development, security testing and launch.
Annual operating cost: $250,000 for hosting, support and updates.
Added net proceeds: a 0.4 percent rise in instant ticket sales of $310 million a year, or about $1.24 million in sales, at a net margin to the state of about 25 percent, giving about $310,000 a year. The 2 percent claim was set aside because the lottery's earlier web entry program showed far smaller effects.
Savings: ending mailed second-chance entries, which cost about $180,000 a year to process.
Net annual benefit is $310,000 plus $180,000 minus $250,000, or $240,000.
At a 4 percent discount rate, three years of $240,000 are worth about $666,000 today (240,000 × 2.775), giving a net present value of about negative $234,000. Over five years they are worth about $1,068,000 (240,000 × 4.452), giving a net present value of about $168,000. Simple payback is 900,000 / 240,000, or 3.75 years.
What the Numbers Mean
The app is a modest investment that pays off only if it runs at least about four years and the conservative benefits hold. If the sales effect were half as large, net annual benefit would fall to $85,000 and the app would not pay back within five years. The portfolio office recommended approval with conditions: a five-year horizon accepted by the commission, a checkpoint at 18 months comparing sales in active app users' regions with other regions and a stop rule if added proceeds run below $150,000 a year at that point.
A benefit estimate is a forecast, and the business case should show what happens when the forecast is wrong.
When Return Is the Wrong Test
The terminal replacement is not discretionary: the current vendor contract ends next year and the old terminals are no longer supported. Judging it by return would be misleading. The relevant question is which option delivers the required capability at the lowest life-cycle cost and risk. The lottery compared three bids on seven-year total cost, including installation, maintenance, communications and the cost of downtime, and on the vendors' records for uptime. The chosen bid was not the lowest initial price but had the lowest seven-year cost.
Budgeting and Cost Control Across Projects
Each approved project now has a cost baseline, a contingency and a monthly cost report from finance showing budget, actual spending and forecast. The portfolio manager reviews all projects together each month, so that underspending on one can be released to another through the leadership team. Contingency stays with each project; management reserve is held centrally. This prevents the old practice in which divisions spent leftover project money on unrelated purchases at fiscal year end.
Benefits With Owners
Serra and Kunc (2015) surveyed project practitioners and found that benefits realization practices were associated with project success and with the successful execution of business strategy. The lottery now names a benefit owner for every project, a manager in operations who will be responsible after handover. For the app, the marketing director owns the added proceeds and the finance manager owns the mail-entry savings. Benefits are reported in the portfolio review for two years after each project closes.
Operational Readiness
Projects deliver capability; operations deliver results, which is why the standard treats the transition of deliverables into use as part of delivering value (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2021). The terminal rollout showed what happens when operations are not ready: help desk calls tripled during the pilot and the desk had no extra staff. The lottery now requires an operational readiness review before each wave and before any launch, covering four questions. Is support staffed for the expected volume, including temporary staff during rollout? Are processes updated, such as prize claims and retailer settlement, and are staff trained on them? Are supplier service levels written into contracts, with response times and penalties, such as a four-hour field repair target for terminals in urban areas and eight hours in rural ones? Are measures in place for the benefit owner to track results?
For the app, readiness means a player support process, a fraud review procedure for scanned tickets and a monthly report to the benefit owners.
Conclusion
The lottery's projects spend money that would otherwise go to the state, so financial discipline is part of its mission. Rebuilding the app's business case with conservative assumptions changed a confident proposal into a conditional approval with a checkpoint and stop rule. Judging the terminal replacement on life-cycle cost avoided the trap of buying the cheapest bid. Common budgeting, central reserve, benefit owners and operational readiness reviews connect the money spent on projects to results that operations will deliver and sustain.
References
Graham, J. R., & Harvey, C. R. (2001). The theory and practice of corporate finance: Evidence from the field. Journal of Financial Economics, 60(2-3), 187-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-405X(01)00044-7
Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.
Serra, C. E. M., & Kunc, M. (2015). Benefits realisation management and its influence on project success and on the execution of business strategies. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 53-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2014.03.011
What the PM 350 Week 4 instructions ask
Week 4 of PM 350 typically asks students to evaluate financial and operational practices that support strategic initiatives. Prompts may cover business cases and project selection, financial measures such as net present value, return on investment and payback, project budgeting and cost control, benefits realization and how projects transition into operations, including capacity, processes and supplier management. A number of prompts instead hand you one initiative's financial case to judge or to recommend improvements to an organization's practices. Stay with your earlier organization or the classroom case, lay out every calculation clearly with your assumptions and support the evaluation with research in APA format.
How this PM 350 Week 4 example is built
The model starts with the agency's habit of approving projects on a single page of hoped-for benefits. It then rebuilds the app's business case with real cash flows: $900,000 to build, $250,000 a year to run and two sources of benefit, extra sales and savings from ending mailed entries. At a 4 percent discount rate the app loses money over three years but returns about $168,000 over five, with payback near three and three-quarter years, so the paper recommends approval with a five-year horizon and a checkpoint. The terminal replacement, which is required, is judged on lowest life-cycle cost instead. Sections on budgeting, benefits ownership and operational readiness close the paper, including help desk staffing and supplier service levels.
PM 350 Week 4 grading rubric: where the points go
The grade for this assignment rests on sound financial reasoning and practical operations thinking. Top papers calculate financial measures correctly, state their assumptions and interpret what the results mean for the decision, including when a project should be judged on cost rather than return. Graders credit attention to budgeting and cost control across projects, benefits with named owners and a realistic view of how operations must change to sustain results. Using research on capital budgeting or benefits realization strengthens the analysis. Clear tables or lists of figures, a logical flow from analysis to recommendation and APA citations complete a high score.
PM 350 Week 4 help: mistakes to avoid
Calculation without context is a frequent weakness: an NPV figure with no discount rate, no time horizon and no explanation. Show your inputs and say why you chose them. Another common problem is accepting a business case's benefit estimates without testing them; ask what would happen if benefits came in lower. Students also treat every project as an investment to be justified by return, even when it is mandatory; in those cases, compare options on cost. Operations are often an afterthought: who answers the phone, who maintains the system and who watches the benefits after the project ends? Plan for them. Finally, check arithmetic twice. A tutor can review your cash flow table if the numbers do not seem to add up.
Related PM 350 sample papers
Other PM 350 week samples
- PM 350 Week 1: Organizational Project Management
- PM 350 Week 2: Phases and Methodologies
- PM 350 Week 3: Communication and Leadership
- PM 350 Week 5: Aligning Projects to Strategy
More BS in Business sample papers
- PM 300 Week 4: Decision Making and Problem Solving
- PM 310 Week 4: The Planning Domain
- PM 340 Week 4: Earned Value and Dashboards
- PM 360 Week 1: Models for People and Change
PM 350 Week 4 questions, answered
What does PM 350 Week 4 usually cover?
It usually covers the financial and operational practices behind strategic projects: business cases, NPV and payback, budgeting and cost control, benefits realization and preparing operations to sustain project results.
Where can I find a free PM 350 Week 4 sample paper?
A complete Week 4 paper testing a state lottery app's business case with NPV and payback, and planning its handoff to operations, appears above for free.
How do you calculate net present value for a project?
Discount each year's net cash flow to today's value using a chosen rate, add them and subtract the initial investment. A positive result means the project is expected to add value at that rate.
What is the payback period?
The time it takes for a project's cumulative net cash inflows to equal its initial investment. Managers like it because it is simple, but it treats a dollar next year like a dollar today and says nothing about what the project earns once it has paid back.
What is benefits realization management?
The practice of identifying, planning, tracking and sustaining the benefits a project is meant to deliver, with named owners responsible for them after the project ends.
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