EMBA Strategic Project Plan Template

EMBA Strategic Project Plan: [Project title]

A plan for the in-company strategic project that many Executive MBA programmes include: a credit-bearing piece of work in which a participant applies the core curriculum to a real strategic question in their own organisation, supervised by faculty and sponsored by a senior executive. It covers scope, stakeholder map, analysis plan, deliverables, governance and confidentiality, with a worked example. Source basis: stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984; Mendelow 1981; Mitchell, Agle and Wood 1997), hypothesis-driven problem solving, and project governance practice; the text is original. Names, credit weight and rules of these projects differ by programme, so follow your school's handbook first. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

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1. What the strategic project is

Many EMBA programmes ask participants to complete a substantial project inside their own organisation, sometimes called a strategic project, an action-learning project or an in-company project. The common features are: a real question that matters to the company's strategy or performance; the participant as the analyst and change agent, often with a small team; a faculty adviser who judges the academic quality; a company sponsor who owns the outcome; and a final report and presentation graded against academic criteria. Some programmes run it across the second year; others attach it to a single course or make it optional. Participants from the same company sometimes work as a team, and some programmes allow a project on a different organisation when the employer cannot agree.

The project is where much of the employer's return on sponsorship comes from (see mba/emba-sponsorship-proposal, section 5) and it is the best evidence you will have of applying the curriculum. It also creates two tensions you must manage from the start. The first is between academic and business goals: the school grades rigour, frameworks and reflection; the sponsor wants a decision and results. The second is between openness and confidentiality: graders need to see your analysis; the company needs to protect its data. Sections 7 and 8 deal with both.

2. Process

The flow below runs from question to handover. Confidentiality comes before any analysis, and the interim review is a real gate: if the hypotheses fail, go back to the analysis plan rather than forcing the original answer.

3. Scope

3.1 The strategic question

Write the question so that it names a decision, a decision maker, a criterion and a time frame. A useful test is that a yes or no, or a choice among options, would answer it. Vague topics ("improve our supply chain") produce reports that describe and do not decide.

• Weak (topic): "Analyse inventory management at Northfield."
• Strong (decision): "Should Northfield's VP Supply Chain roll out weekly, model-based store replenishment to the 22 stores of the Western region by Q3 [year], and on what conditions, given a target of 9 weeks of inventory without a fall in in-stock rate below 95%?"

3.2 Charter

Example (Northfield, Western region). In scope: 22 stores, apparel and footwear categories, replenishment rules, the weekly ordering process, from week 1 to week 16 of the project. Out of scope: distribution centre operations, supplier lead-time negotiations and pricing. Effort: 10 hours a week for 16 weeks, 160 hours for the participant, plus about 40 hours from two analysts.

3.3 Value at stake (Example)

Size the prize early, at order-of-magnitude level, so the sponsor knows why the project deserves time. Inventory value is weeks of inventory times weekly cost of goods sold (COGS); the annual saving is the inventory released times the carrying-cost rate (capital, storage, shrinkage and obsolescence).

This USD 120,000 is the gross saving that the sponsorship case credits partly to the programme (mba/emba-sponsorship-proposal, assumption A-09). For the inventory theory behind it, see mba/mba-inventory-card.

4. Stakeholder map

Freeman (1984) defined stakeholders as any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organisation's objectives. For a project, narrow that to the people who can affect or are affected by your recommendation. Two classic tools help:

• Power and interest grid (Mendelow 1981): place each stakeholder by their power over the decision and their interest in it. High power, high interest: manage closely. High power, low interest: keep satisfied. Low power, high interest: keep informed. Low power, low interest: monitor.
• Salience (Mitchell, Agle and Wood 1997): power, legitimacy and urgency. Stakeholders with all three demand attention first.

5. Analysis plan

5.1 Issue tree and hypotheses

Break the strategic question into sub-questions that are mutually exclusive and together exhaustive, then state a hypothesis for each that your analysis can support or reject. Hypothesis-driven work keeps a part-time project focused: you collect only the data that can change the answer.

5.2 Frameworks: use them to think, not to decorate

Choose frameworks that answer a sub-question. External analysis (Porter's five forces, mba/mba-five-forces-card) fits a market-entry question; internal analysis (value chain, mba/mba-value-chain-card; resources and capabilities, mba/mba-resource-based-view-card) fits a question about where the company creates value; operations and change frameworks fit an implementation question like the example. Graders reward a framework that is applied with data and changes the conclusion. They penalise a framework drawn for its own sake.

5.3 Data request

6. Deliverables

The company version and the academic version can share most of the analysis. The company version leads with the decision and the numbers; the academic version also shows the reasoning, the alternatives you rejected, the limits of your evidence and what you learned.

7. Governance

7.1 Roles and RACI

R = responsible, A = accountable, C = consulted, I = informed.

7.2 Cadence

7.3 Risk and decision logs

8. Confidentiality and data protection

The academic report will be read by people outside your company: faculty, sometimes external examiners, and possibly classmates in a presentation. Plan for that from the start rather than redacting at the end.

1. Agreement. Find out what the school offers: many programmes have a standard confidentiality agreement for company projects, restricted circulation of reports, or the option not to deposit the report in a library. Your employer may require its own non-disclosure agreement. Record what applies and who signed it.
2. Data classification. Classify each data item with your company's scheme before it leaves company systems; keep restricted data on company devices.
3. Disguise. Present indexed or scaled figures (for example, sales indexed to 100) or disguised names where graders do not need the real values, and say in the report that you have done so.
4. Personal data. Interviews and employee data may be personal data. Where EU or UK data protection law applies, the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679, and the UK version) sets duties on purpose, minimisation and security; other countries have their own laws. Ask your company's data protection contact before collecting, and anonymise quotes.
5. Trade secrets. Information with commercial value that the company keeps secret may be protected as a trade secret (in the EU, Directive (EU) 2016/943). Treat pricing, cost, supplier and customer data as restricted unless the sponsor clears it.
6. Generative AI tools. Do not paste company data into an AI tool that your employer has not approved, and follow your programme's academic integrity and AI policy for the report itself; disclose AI use where the programme asks.
7. Publication and reuse. Agree in advance whether you may describe the project in a CV, an interview or an article, and in what level of detail.

This section is a checklist for planning, not legal advice. The company's legal or data protection team decides what may be shared.

9. Assessment and reflection

A typical academic rubric for an in-company project weighs these criteria; use your programme's own weights.

Reflection prompts, drawing on the reflective-practice tradition (Schön 1983):

1. What did I assume about my organisation at the start that turned out to be wrong?
2. Where did my position in the hierarchy help or hinder the analysis?
3. Which stakeholder conversation changed my recommendation, and why?
4. What would I do differently if I led this project again?
5. Which course concepts did I actually use, and which did not survive contact with reality?

10. Timeline

Week 0 is [YYYY-MM-DD].

11. Quality checklist

• The question names a decision, a decision maker, a criterion and a time frame.
• Sponsor and faculty adviser have approved scope in writing.
• Confidentiality and data protection are agreed before data moves.
• Value at stake is sized with traceable numbers and formulas.
• Every hypothesis has a test that could reject it.
• Stakeholders with high power and high interest have a named engagement plan.
• Governance cadence and decision rights are set.
• Company and academic deliverables are both planned.
• Figures in the academic report are disguised where required, and the report says so.
• Reflection notes are kept throughout, not written at the end.

12. Common mistakes

1. Choosing a topic instead of a decision.
2. A scope too large for a part-time project of three to six months.
3. No senior sponsor, or a sponsor who is not the decision maker.
4. Collecting data before stating hypotheses.
5. Frameworks drawn for decoration, not used to reach the conclusion.
6. Ignoring the sceptical stakeholders who must implement the result.
7. Moving company data to personal devices or unapproved AI tools.
8. Redacting at the last minute instead of planning disguise from the start.
9. Writing one report for two audiences, so it satisfies neither the sponsor nor the grader.
10. Treating the project as consulting on someone else's area, without reflecting on your own role as a leader inside the organisation.
11. Letting the day job absorb the project weeks with no reduced-scope option agreed.

Sources and further reading

• Freeman, R. E. (1984). Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach. Pitman.
• Mendelow, A. L. (1981). Environmental scanning: the impact of the stakeholder concept. ICIS 1981 Proceedings, 20. aisel.aisnet.org.
• Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R. and Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853-886.
• Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
• Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67.
• Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation) and Directive (EU) 2016/943 (trade secrets), on EUR-Lex; check the consolidated text.
• Further reading on structured problem solving: Minto, B., The Pyramid Principle (Pearson, any recent edition).
• Your programme handbook for the project course.

Revision history

Standard and licence note

Structure aligned with common practice for in-company and action-learning projects in executive education, stakeholder theory (Freeman 1984; Mendelow 1981; Mitchell, Agle and Wood 1997) and project governance practice. The text, worksheets and example are original; Northfield Outdoor Co. and the people named are fictional. No school is affiliated with this template; follow your programme's handbook and check the current official text of any law named. Template licence: MIT.