A real world project management exercise: turning a client brief that was only a single line ("organize a Women's Day celebration for 30 VIP clients") into a full project charter and a Gantt chart mapped out day by day, complete with dependencies and budget, ready to execute.
Two connected PM skills (defining a project properly, then running it in detail) covering the full range of what a project actually needs to stay on track.
Scenario: a realtor (Claire Tan, my Market and Competitor Research client) asked me to organize a Women's Day celebration for 30 VIP clients in Jakarta, with 2 months to plan. Here is how I scoped it.
VIP female clients, half day brunch in Jakarta
August 18 to October 21, 2026, planning through closeout
Fully itemized across 6 cost categories
Each with a specific mitigation plan
The charter frames the event around strengthening Claire's relationships with her VIP clients and reinforcing brand loyalty, not just logistics for logistics' sake.
Venue, catering, invitations, a guest speaker, activities, and gift bags are in scope. Guest transport, overnight stays, and programming across multiple days are explicitly out of scope; this event runs for a single half day.
Mitigation: send invitations 6 weeks ahead, then follow up personally over WhatsApp at the 2 week and 3 day marks, not just a single invite and hope.
Catering, gifting, and decor are the categories most likely to run over, so a contingency reserve is locked into the budget from the start, not added after the fact.
All 7 sections (objective, scope, deliverables, timeline, risks, budget, team, and stakeholders) exactly as delivered to the client.
19 tasks across 6 milestones, each with an owner, a duration, and a dependency, not just a list of things to do, but the order they have to happen in.
From "confirm event concept" to "vendor payments and wrap up report," spanning August 18 to October 21, 2026.
Every task states what it waits on (for example "After 1,4"), not a sequential guess, so the schedule holds up if a task slips.
Invitations go out on September 8 and 9, but final headcount is not confirmed until October 12 and 13, a full 21 day window for tracking RSVPs in between, so gift bag and catering numbers (locked in Milestone 4) are based on real confirmations, not guesses.
All 19 tasks with owners, durations, dependencies, and the visual timeline laid out day by day, plus the full income and expense budget sheet, linked by formulas throughout.
Microsoft Word
Microsoft ExcelAvailable part time, on a flexible schedule. Happy to walk through how this planning approach would apply to your project or event.