| Course | GM591 Strategic Project Selection and Initiation |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 9 |
| Paper type | Portfolio capacity review |
| Length | About 1,120 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Management |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GM591 Unit 9
Two GIS Analysts at 190 Percent: A Unit 9 Portfolio Capacity Review for an Electric Cooperative
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GM591: Strategic Project Selection and Initiation
Unit 9 Portfolio Capacity Review
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The electric cooperative, its staff, its projects and every figure are composite and illustrative; the research cited is real.
Why Capacity, Not Money
Coteau Plains Electric Cooperative's portfolio this year includes two obligations, pole-loading remediation and control network segmentation, and five discretionary projects that passed screening and scoring: meter replacement, the outage system, vegetation analytics, community solar and the fiber pilot. The budget can fund all of them. The people cannot.
Mats Engwall and Anna Jerbrant studied multi-project organizations and found that the chief difficulty was not planning individual projects but allocating scarce people across them, a problem they called the resource allocation syndrome (Engwall & Jerbrant, 2003). Robert Cooper and colleagues likewise found that many firms approve far more projects than their resources can carry, so that every project moves slowly (Cooper et al., 2001).
Supply by Role
Supply is counted as hours available for projects each quarter, after work that is not a project is removed.
GIS analysts: 2. About 900 hours each quarter between them, of which about 270 go to mapping new service connections and routine updates, leaving about 630 for projects.
Control systems engineer: 1. About 450 hours a quarter, of which about 90 go to operating the control system, leaving about 360.
Distribution engineers: 4. About 1,800 hours a quarter, of which half go to new service design and line extensions, leaving about 900.
IT staff: 6. About 2,700 hours a quarter, of which about 60 percent go to support and operations, leaving about 1,080.
Line crews: 11. About 680 crew-days a quarter, of which half go to new connections, maintenance and trouble calls. From June through September, a storm restoration reserve holds 25 percent of all crew hours, which leaves the third quarter with the least project time.
How Demand Was Counted
Each project manager was asked for hours by role and quarter from the current plan, not from the original proposal, and for the assumptions behind them. The review then checked each plan's assumptions against the others. That step found the GIS problem: three plans listed "network model available" as an assumption, and none listed it as a task. Demand figures include a 10 percent allowance for rework, based on last year's projects, and exclude work that the cooperative has already contracted out. Where a project manager could not give hours for a role, the review used the hours from a similar past project and marked the figure as an estimate. Six of the 35 project-role-quarter figures are estimates of this kind.
Demand by Role and Quarter
Demand comes from each project's plan, summed by role. Two rows show red.
GIS analysts. Meter replacement needs every meter tied to the right transformer and feeder in the network model. The outage system needs the same connectivity to predict which devices have operated. Pole-loading remediation needs accurate pole and conductor attributes. Each project's plan assumed the network model would be correct, and each budgeted only the hours to use it, not to fix it. When the three plans are combined with the correction work none of them included, demand for GIS hours in the second and third quarters is about 1,200 hours, against 630 available: about 190 percent.
Three projects each assumed someone else would correct the network model, so the portfolio needed the same scarce work three times and had budgeted it zero times.
Control systems engineer. The one engineer is assigned to four projects at once: network segmentation, the outage system's connection to the control system, the meter system's head-end integration and the fiber pilot's network monitoring. Demand in the second quarter is about 440 hours against 360, about 122 percent.
Line crews. Once the pole-loading program is phased over six quarters rather than four, crew demand stays below 85 percent of project capacity in every quarter, including the storm season.
Distribution engineers and IT staff. Both stay between 70 and 90 percent in every quarter.
Recommendations
Resequence: make the network model correction its own project, first. A defined project to correct the network model, staffed by one GIS analyst and a contract GIS firm for about 800 hours at roughly $120,000, should run in the first two quarters. Meter replacement and the outage system then draw on a corrected model rather than each attempting partial fixes. This change brings GIS demand to about 105 percent in the second quarter and 90 percent in the third.
Defer: vegetation analytics by two quarters. Its GIS needs are small but fall in the peak quarters. Starting it in the fourth quarter costs little, since its benefits are modest in dollars, and frees about 120 GIS hours.
Relieve: contract support for network segmentation. Segmentation is an obligation with an insurance deadline. A contract control systems engineer for about 200 hours, at roughly $40,000, takes the segmentation design and frees the cooperative's engineer for the outage and meter integrations.
Decline: community solar for this cycle. It has a negative net present value at the cooperative's cost of capital and needs distribution engineering time for interconnection design in the second quarter. Declining it now, and inviting it back if a grant or cheaper financing appears, removes demand without harming any obligation.
Hold: the fiber pilot's phase two, as the Gate 3 memo recommends. Phase two's demand for the control systems engineer and line crews would otherwise arrive in the fourth quarter.
Risks to the Revised Plan
The revised plan has its own weak points. The contract GIS firm must start in January to finish the model correction in two quarters; a late start would push meter replacement's district cutovers back. A severe storm season could consume more than the 25 percent crew reserve, and in that case the pole-loading program, as an obligation, keeps its crews while meter installation pauses. The cooperative's control systems engineer remains a single point of failure; if that person leaves, every integration slows. The review recommends that the IT department cross-train one staff member on the control system during the year, at a cost of about 150 hours, which fits within IT's available capacity.
After the Changes
With these changes, no role exceeds 105 percent in any quarter, and the only quarter above 100 percent is the second, for GIS, during the model correction. The Project Management Institute's portfolio standard calls for balancing the portfolio against capacity and sequencing work by dependencies, not only by priority (Project Management Institute, 2017). The network model correction is the dependency the original plans missed.
References
Cooper, R. G., Edgett, S. J., & Kleinschmidt, E. J. (2001). Portfolio management for new products (2nd ed.). Perseus.
Engwall, M., & Jerbrant, A. (2003). The resource allocation syndrome: The prime challenge of multi-project management? International Journal of Project Management, 21(6), 403-409. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0263-7863(02)00113-8
Project Management Institute. (2017). The standard for portfolio management (4th ed.).
Reading the GM 591 Unit 9 instructions
GM591 Unit 9 asks you to compare an approved portfolio's demand for people with the supply available. Count supply by role and quarter, subtracting work the organization must do regardless of projects, such as routine operations and emergency reserves. Gather demand by role and quarter from each project's current plan, and check plans' assumptions against one another, since shared assumptions often hide overloads. Show where demand exceeds supply, with percentages. Explain why each overload occurred. Then recommend changes in a deliberate order: resequence, defer, decline and only then hire or contract, costing any outside help. Name the risks to the revised plan. Close with capacity after the changes. Expect about six pages with a demand and supply table by role and quarter and a heat map or its written equivalent, citing multi-project research in APA 7.
How the GM 591 Unit 9 example is put together
The review lists two obligations and five discretionary projects and cites Engwall and Jerbrant's resource allocation syndrome and Cooper and colleagues on approving more than resources allow. Supply is counted for GIS analysts at about 630 project hours a quarter, one control systems engineer at about 360, distribution engineers, IT staff and eleven crews with a storm reserve. A section on counting demand shows three plans listing the network model as an assumption and none as a task. GIS demand reaches about 1,200 hours in two quarters, which the highlighted sentence explains, and the engineer reaches 122 percent. Recommendations add a model correction with a contract GIS firm at about $120,000, defer vegetation analytics, contract segmentation help at about $40,000, decline solar and hold fiber. Risks include a late start and a single point of failure. After changes, no role exceeds 105 percent.
Where the points sit in the GM591 Unit 9 rubric
GM591 instructors look for capacity counted honestly by role and quarter and recommendations that change the portfolio, not only add staff. Subtracting run work before counting project hours earns early credit. Demand drawn from current plans, and checked for shared assumptions, carries significant weight because portfolio overloads often hide between projects. Overloads should be shown in percentages with causes. Recommendations earn more when they resequence, defer and decline before hiring, and when outside help is specific and costed. Naming risks to the revised plan shows realism. Showing capacity after the changes proves the recommendations work. Engwall and Jerbrant's study of multi-project firms, the Cooper, Edgett and Kleinschmidt portfolio book and PMI's portfolio standard are cited in APA 7.
GM591 Unit 9 help from the desk
Many GM591 Unit 9 reviews count headcount rather than available hours, which overstates capacity. Others add up demand without checking whether projects share an assumption, missing the overload that matters most. A common gap is the order of remedies: answering every conflict with more staff avoids the portfolio choice the unit is about. Some writers recommend changes without showing capacity afterward. Count supply after run work, gather demand from current plans by role and quarter, look for shared assumptions, show overloads with causes, resequence and defer before contracting, cost any help, name the risks and show the result.
Get a GM591 Unit 9 example written to your instructions
List the approved projects, the roles each one needs by quarter as far as you can estimate, and the staff actually available after routine work; add the Unit 9 prompt and rubric. The first review is free and ready in 24-48h, with run work subtracted first and every recommendation dated. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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GM591 Unit 9 questions, answered
What counts as run work?
Anything the organization must do whether or not a project exists: routine maintenance, customer service, support of existing systems, compliance tasks and reserves for predictable emergencies. It usually consumes a large share of specialist time. Subtracting it first, role by role, gives a realistic picture of what projects can draw on, and graders tend to check whether a review did this.
Is hiring or contracting an acceptable recommendation?
It can be one recommendation among several, provided it is specific and costed, such as contracting a defined piece of work. A review that answers every conflict with more staff avoids the portfolio decision the unit is about. Show what can be resequenced, deferred or declined first, then use outside help for what remains.
How detailed should demand estimates be?
Quarterly by role is usually enough for a portfolio review. Monthly detail belongs in project schedules, and daily detail obscures the pattern. Where estimates are uncertain, give a range and note which conflicts survive even at the low end, since those are the ones that justify moving a project.
Where can I find a free GM591 Unit 9 sample paper?
This page carries a full GM591 Unit 9 portfolio capacity review for an electric cooperative, with supply and demand by role and quarter, a GIS overload explained, five recommendations and APA 7 references.
How did the GIS analysts end up at 190 percent?
Meter replacement, the outage system and pole-loading remediation all needed a corrected network model. Each plan assumed the model would be fixed and budgeted only the hours to use it, so the correction work was needed three times and budgeted none.