Richard J. Bocchinfuso

Discussion

Discussion Question: At a pharmaceutical firm, researchers are assigned to clusters of diseases (mental health conditions, autoimmune diseases, neurological diseases) rather than to a specific drug research project. What might be some of the benefits of organizing the firm’s research efforts in this manner? (p. 72 Project Management Textbook)

A PMI conference paper entitled Complexity of project management in the pharmaceutical industry, clearly outlines some of the challenges facing pharmaceutical firms. According to this research, pharmaceutical firms struggle with regulatory and compliance requirements which are becoming increasingly more stringent, the increasing cost of R&D efforts and the competition from the generic drug producers. To combat the growing regulatory requirements, rising R&D costs and the ability recover R&D costs due to competition from generic drug producers pharmaceutical firms focus on streamlining communication and coordination between internal functional teams. Organizing research efforts by disease clusters may provide a structure where broader functional organizations can more easily identify synergies. The ability to identify synergies is one way to offset the rising cost of R&D.

By finding developing efficiencies through the identification of synergies and streamlining communication and coordination pharmaceutical firms can shorten the drug-development cycle and ultimately bring drugs to market faster. Organizing efforts by disease clusters may create the opportunity to identify and reuse existing compounds reducing the phase of drug development which pharmaceutical firms call drug discovery.

References

Drug discovery. (2018, January 15). Retrieved January 17, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_discovery

Pattanaik, A. (2014). Complexity of project management in the pharmaceutical industry. Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2014—EMEA, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.

Portny, Stanley E.. Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

Assignment

Complete Project 1-4 on page 35 in the MS Project 2013 book

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Week 2 Exam (#1): 100%

Discussion Question #1: As a project manager for an electronics manufacturer, you are supposed to design a new, low-cost MP3 player in three months’ time working with a “virtual team” of three technicians. Because outcome, schedule, and resources are all interrelated, what are some options you might consider if you suddenly lose two of your technicians? (p. 24 Project Management Textbook)

• Assuming the three resources initially assigned to the project all possess the same subject matter expertise the simple answer would be to extend the project schedule by 3x.  Assuming there are some interdependencies between tasks serializing tasks may not extend the project schedule by 3x but there are many unknown variables so for the sake of argument, and in the interest of brevity I’ll just assume a 3x factor applied to the schedule.
• Look at project funding and the value of on-time delivery and potentially engage contract labor to help offset the loss of the two technicians.
• Review the project plan and the desired outcome.  Are there trade-offs of compromises willing to be made that might impact resourcing and scheduling?
  • On a personal note, this is something I do daily as part of an Agile project management methodology.  Managing sprints and a backlog daily against project burndown forces us to shift priorities often and delicately balance scope, defects and an ever growing backlog.
• Look at resourcing and potential efficiencies that might help offset the loss of the two technicians.  Are there other stakeholders, like the project manager, the functional manager, executive and upper management who can play a more active role in the project to offset the loss of the functional employees.

References
Portny, Stanley E.. Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

Discussion Question #2: As a project manager of a new team that’s developing an online shopping site for a traditional department store, you have been asked to calculate how much your team will spend on user testing in the next 12 months. Your team has never conducted user testing, so this is an unknown. How might you respond effectively to this unknown? (p. 54–55 Project Management Textbook)

• While the team has not performed acceptance testing in the past, it is possible that the team has performed integration, unit, smoke and regression testing.  While acceptance testing (or UAT) may have more dependencies than other testing methodologies, the team may have a basis for estimating UAT.  Documenting assumptions and limitations and leveraging tangential knowledge from different testing methodologies may allow the project manager to develop a cogent estimate.
• Leverage best practices, industry standards, existing protocols, and frameworks.  Acceptance testing is a standard software development phase, and an online commerce site is a standard web-based application so the project manager may be able to leverage industry standards and best practices to estimate the amount of time which will be spent on acceptance testing.
• If there is no basis at all for estimating how much time will be spent on acceptance testing (an unknown unknown), no way to apply assumptions or limitations to some basis of an estimate then the project manager may have to say there is not enough information available to provide a cogent estimate.  The project manager might set the expectation that the schedule and resources for acceptance testing information will be forthcoming as more data points become available.  The project manager may also create a schedule placeholder and inform stakeholders that the schedule will be adjusted as information becomes available.

References
Portny, Stanley E.. Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

Discussion
Each student is expected to read all reviews posted, because some of the questions might be taken from the concepts discussed in the book reviews.

** Discussion post was just a summary fo complete book report, see book report below.

Book Report

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Assignment

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Instructions
Using the WSJ or IBD, look up the following stocks: General Electric, Ford Motors, Microsoft, and Intel, and answer the following questions for each stock. You might have to refer to several issues of your newspaper for all of the information if the paper rotates the information daily. You might have to do some web research to get the answers.

• What is the current price of the stock? What was the net price change for the date covered by the paper?
• What was the stock’s price range for the last 12 months?
• What is the current dividend? What is the dividend yield?
• What is the PE ratio?

Assignment

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Week 6 Exam (#3): 100%

Discussion Post

Given your risk tolerance, and your need to diversify, explain how the Selected Realized Returns (1926–2013) page 269 and the Effects of Portfolio Risk for Average Stocks will impact your future investment decisions and why

I don’t consider myself risk adverse, but I do consider myself a prudent long-term investor who likes to balance principle protection with reasonable and consistent gains.

Having been in the technology space for the last 25+ years and lived through the dot.com bomb I learned my lessons in the late 1990s and early 2000s regarding the difference between a high-risk investment and a foolish investment. The days of reading Red Herring and making investments based on pure market speculation with the expectation of a combinatorial explosion are long gone, at least for me. Today I am a long investor, who follows a very Warren Buffet’esqe investment strategy.

1. I invest for the long haul.
2. I keep speculation away and focus on proven business.
3. I dollar-cost average into the market.

I’ve been investing using DRIP plans for 20+ years, buying stock directly from companies and avoiding brokerage fees. The days of having to buy and read
The Moneypaper are behind us; now long investors can use services like Capital One’s Sharebuilder to dollar-cost average into the market.

I am a big fan of SPDR (spider) ETFs (exchange-traded funds) like SPY and IYY. SPY and IYY are SPDR ETFs that track the S&P 500 and DJIA. Buying equities like SPY and IYY allows investors to diversify by buying a sock that is a fund made up of other stocks.

Outside of the above rules, I have a simple investment strategy, never invest money in the market that you need back in the short-term. The market is speculatory by nature, so I always keep the perspective that I am gambling. With this said there is also a lot I/you can do to swing the odds in my/our favor. While investing is a different type of gambling than going to Vegas, it’s important never to lose sight of the fact that the bottom is still $0 (assuming your not trading on margin in which case the bottom may be below $0). When the market became depressed in 2008, my strategy was to double down. Why?

1. I didn’t have money in the stock market that I needed; thus I didn’t need to accept my loses and take my cash.
2. Increasing my positions in what were solid business hit by the depressed economy allowed me to lower my cost basis. This dramatically decreased my time to recovery.

Here is an example:

Desc                            Stock          Position (# of shares)    Avg cost / share       Current cost / share   Cost Basis         Value                  Proft / Loss
Starting Position           XYZ            100                                   $100.00                      $50.00                          $10,000.00          $5,000.00             -$5,000.00
Buy 1                            XYZ            100                                   $50.00                        $50.00                          $5,000.00            $5,000.00                     $0.00
Buy 2                            XYZ            100                                   $51.00                        $60.00                          $5,100.00            $6,000.00                 $900.00
Ending Position            XYZ            300                                   $67.00                        $62.00                          $20,100.00          $18,600.00           -$1,500.00

It’s essential to have a balanced portfolio, balancing small-company stocks which are more volatile (highest risk) but hold the potential for more significant gains with investments like U.S. Treasury Bills which are low risk but deliver much lower potential returns. Balancing returns and principal protection should be key criteria in determining portfolio distribution.

References

Brigham, Eugene F., and Joel F. Houston. Fundamentals of financial management. Boston, MA, Cengage Learning, 2016.

Frankel, Matthew. “3 Pieces of Warren Buffett Wisdom for an Expensive Stock Market.” The Motley Fool, The Motley Fool, 4 Sept. 2016, www.fool.com/investing/2016/09/04/3-pieces-of-warren-buffett-wisdom-for-an-expensive.aspx.

“Recent Articles.” DRIP Investing – Direct Investment Plans & Dividend Reinvestment DRIPs | Moneypaper, www.directinvesting.com/.

Assignment

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Directions
Plot the current yield curve from the interest rates of U.S. Treasury securities as found in WSJ or IBD, or examine the chart WSJ or IBD provides. Do not send the curve, but do describe and define it (Normal or Inverted).

Instructions

1. Describe the trend of interest rates over the last several years.
2. Give me your best educated estimate of where interests are headed over the next year and justify your answer.
3. Determine the approximate percentage appreciation or depreciation of the NASDAQ Composite, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the S&P 500 for the last 12 months and provide these figures.

Discussion Post

The current (12:43 PM EST 11/17/17) U.S 10 Year Treasury Note yield is 2.338%. With a 52-week yield range of 2.016% (low) to 2.641% (high).  The current U.S. Treasury yield curve is “normal” (upward-sloping) although when compared with the yield curve from a year go (2016) the slope has flattened.

Interest rates from 2008 to 2017 have risen incrementally after falling in the midst of the 2007 financial crisis.

• Dec 16, 2008 U.S, Prime Rate: 3.25%
• Dec 17, 2015 U.S, Prime Rate: 3.75%
• Dec 15, 2016 U.S, Prime Rate: 4.00%
• March 16, 2016 U.S, Prime Rate: 4.00%
• June 15, 2017 U.S, Prime Rate: 4.25%

The current U.S. Prime rate remains at 4.25. On Dec 13, 2017 the FOMC will meet again, it is likely that interest rates will slightly increase.

Long-term rates follow the 10-year Treasury yield. We have already established that the 10-year Treasury Yield is “normal” (upward-sloping) so I would expect that interest rates will also rise.

In addition, the October 2017 jobs report showed the addition of 261,000 jobs, indicating an expanding economy. When the economy is strong demand for Treasuries falls, as this occurs prices on U.S. Treasuries fall while yield increases along with interest rates.

[google-drive-embed url=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G7zmcmRq4ELRFCJuabFJMTSjHZeOnb2HsFnf1j1gv1k/preview?usp=drivesdk” title=”DOW-NASDQ-S&P_Analysis” icon=”https://drive-thirdparty.googleusercontent.com/16/type/application/vnd.google-apps.spreadsheet” width=”100%” height=”200″ style=”embed”]

References

Amadeo, K. (n.d.). Where Were the 261,000 Jobs Added in October? Retrieved November 17, 2017, from https://www.thebalance.com/jobs-report-monthly-employment-growth-statistics-3305732

Brigham, E. F., & Houston, J. F. (2016). Fundamentals of financial management. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Kenny, T. (n.d.). See How Economic Growth Changes Affect Bonds? Retrieved November 17, 2017, from https://www.thebalance.com/bonds-and-the-economy-417070

Kenny, T. (n.d.). Learn Why Bond Prices and Yields Move in Opposite Directions. Retrieved November 17, 2017, from https://www.thebalance.com/why-do-bond-prices-and-yields-move-in-opposite-directions-417082

Prime Rate History. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2017, from http://www.fedprimerate.com/wall_street_journal_prime_rate_history.htm

U.S. 10 Year Treasury Note. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2017, from http://quotes.wsj.com/bond/BX/TMUBMUSD10Y

What is the Prime Rate. (n.d.) Retrieve November 17, 2017, from https://www.moneycafe.com/personal-finance/prime-rate/

WSJ Graphics. (n.d.). Retrieved November 17, 2017, from http://www.wsj.com/graphics/yield-curve-explainer/

Week 4 Exam (#2): 100%

Problems

4-1 DAYS SALES OUTSTANDING Baker Brothers has a DSO of 40 days, and its annual sales are $7,300,000. What is its accounts receivable balance? Assume that it uses a 365-day year.

4-2 DEBT TO CAPITAL RATIO Bartley Barstools has a market/book ratio equal to 1. Its stock price is $14 per share and it has 5 million shares outstanding. The firm’s total capital is $125 million and it finances with only debt and common equity. What is its debt-to-capital ratio?

4-3 DuPONT ANALYSIS Doublewide Dealers has an ROA of 10%, a 2% profit margin, and an ROE of 15%. What is its total assets turnover? What is its equity multiplier?

4-4 MARKET/BOOK RATIO Jaster Jets has $10 billion in total assets. Its balance sheet shows $1 billion in current liabilities, $3 billion in long-term debt, and $6 billion in common equity. It has 800 million shares of common stock outstanding, and its stock price is $32 per share. What is Jaster’s market/book ratio?

4-5 PRICE/EARNINGS RATIO A company has an EPS of $2.00, a book value per share of $20, and a market/book ratio of 1.2×. What is its P/E ratio?

4-6 DuPONT AND ROE A firm has a profit margin of 2% and an equity multiplier of 2.0. Its sales are $100 million, and it has total assets of $50 million. What is its ROE?

Assignment

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Description
Construct a personal retirement problem and solve it. The purpose of this exercise is to use the chapter’s concepts of future values, annuities, and compounding to your personal financial planning.

Instructions

• • Determine the amount of investment funds you currently have available in all personal investments and self-directed and vested retirement accounts
  • Then, determine how much you will be adding to your investments a year in the future
  • Next, decide at what age you plan to retire. Determine what annual investment return you expect to earn on your investments
  • Calculate the future value of your investments at retirement
  • Justify your return rate by explaining what you plan to invest in and its historic returns
  • After determining your nest egg at retirement, adjust the variables at least three times as a means of increasing the retirement account. For example, change the age you will retire, change the expected return rate, and change the amount you save annually. Try to adjust the variables in order that you can develop a retirement value that you are happy with

Guidelines

• Post your answer to this week’s discussion board
  • You can either use real numbers and base your discussion upon these real numbers, or if uncomfortable with providing personal info, use hypothetical numbers

Discussion Post

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Week 2 Exam (#1): 100%

Discussion Posts

Provide a one-page document outlining your prior financial and/or investment experience and your current interests in this subject if you have any. I realize that many of you are only taking this class because it is required, which is okay, but I would like to learn what you hope to get from this course.

First off I want to apologize to everyone for my late post this week, this will not be a persistent behavior, this week has just been a crazy travel week for me.

Hello! My name is Rich Bocchinfuso; I hold a BS in Computer Science, an MS in Computer Information Systems, and I am pursuing an MS in Information Technology with a specialization in Cybersecurity at Florida Tech. I am 44 years old and have been in technology for the past 20+ years, and I am lucky in the sense that my career as a technologist and programmer is also my passion because I spend 10 to 15 hours a day in front of a computer. I live in New Jersey, and I am based out of my companies New York City regional office, but I am often on the road or working from home. I am married to my wife of seventeen years, Gwen, and we have two little girls Maddy who is twelve and Eden who is seven. Both my wife and I are originally from Pennsylvania, but we have made in New Jersey our home for the past twenty years.

My desire to attend graduate school is driven by personal fulfillment as well as a desire to develop skills which will allow me to grow professionally. My goal is to complete the master’s program in information technology with a specialization in cybersecurity and to put the academic skills I acquire to practical use. I am a driven self-starter who is committed to achieving my educational and professional goals. With the half-life of discrete technical knowledge shrinking I have been leveraging learning platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, CloudAcademy, CBT Nuggets, Codeacademy, SoloLearn and others for years to combat mental atrophy. I regularly listen to and watch podcasts, and read industry publications and whitepapers to stay abreast of industry happenings.

I am an avid listener of The Dave Ramsey Show and Mad Money with Jim Kramer.

For as long as I can remember I have loved tinkering and it is this love of tinkering that became the basis of my love of computing and technology. Over the past twenty-plus years, I have invested an immense amount of time honing my craft. I am an avid maker; I enjoy building things, writing about and sharing what I create. For the past ten years, I have been maintaining and sharing my ideas via my personal blog (http://gotitsolutions.org).

I am an analytical person who enjoys making decisions rooted in empirical data, and I am an INTP (https://www.16personalities.com/profiles/57648d209ea7b).

With regards to my financial experience, I run an engineering division within my company and manage things like labor costs, pipeline, backlog, revenue recognition, resource utilization, gross profit, margins and other critical operational metrics on a daily basis. I have to admit some of the accounting principles like revenue recognition drive me a bit crazy, but MGT5002: Corporate Finance helped me to reconcile many of things that I have been doing for years but didn’t deeply understand why.

Personally, I like to follow the stock market and market trends, especially in the technology sector but I try to maintain a balanced portfolio. Twenty-plus years ago a friend of mine introduced me to Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIP) through a book called The Money Paper and the concept of dollar-cost averaging. I started buying stocks directly from companies and have continued this practice of acquiring equities over the past twenty years although today the process is much more straightforward with the emergence of Sharebuilder.

In the late 90s, like many of us in technology at the time, I learned a lot about venture capital (VC), restricted stock, stock preferences, capitalization, and recapitalization. Many of the business decisions that were made in the late 90s and were often driven by VCs and seemed to lack common sense; there was crazy money flowing into tech, venture capitalists were trying to build fast follower businesses and drive to an IPO without sound fundamentals. I learned a lot of what not to do, how not to run a business, etc… during that period of my career.

I am a big Jim Cramer and Dave Ramsey fan, I have read The Total Money Makeover. I would classify personal financial philosophy as fiscally paranoid; my father taught me that you should always be your most significant creditor, meaning that you should pay yourself (save) first and more than you pay any other creditor. This is how I learned to live my life; when things get unbalanced, and the percentages don’t align with my plan I struggle to sleep at night (aka fiscal paranoia).

A couple of my favorite Dave Ramsey quotes are:

• “If you will live like no one else, later you can live like no one else.” – Dave Ramsey
• “Act your wage.” – Dave Ramsey

We use many of Dave Ramsey’s techniques in my house, for instance, we have a save, give, and send banks (coffee cans) for each of my children. We ask them to allocate 1/3 or their money for savings, 1/3 of their money for tidings, and 1/3 of their money for spending (acquisition of things).

I hope that I can learn something new and apply academic principles to my applied knowledge which always helps me to develop a deeper understanding of a topic. This was certainly the case with the coursework from MGT5002: Corporate Finance and I suspect it will be the case here as well. With MGT5002, the accounting aspects were not that interesting to me although the material did help me better understand concepts I am exposed to daily, I do have an interest in the capital markets, investing, etc… so I expect to get even more out of this class.

I am happy to be part of this class, and I look for to sharing this learning experience with all of you.

Post an investing website you like to use.

My apologies for the late response, this will definitely not a persistent behavior, this has been a crazy week of travel.

Here are some of the online investment tools I use on a regular basis:
CapitalOne Investing PortfolioBuilder (formerly Sharebuilder):  https://www.capitaloneinvesting.com/main/investing/tools.aspx
Robinhood (free stock trading):  https://www.robinhood.com/
Google Finance:  https://finance.google.com/finance
Yahoo Finance:  https://finance.yahoo.com/
Investopedia:  http://www.investopedia.com/
Morningstar:  http://www.morningstar.com/
Bloomberg:  https://www.bloomberg.com/
CNBC:  https://www.cnbc.com/
The Motley Fool: https://www.fool.com/

I also use JStock (https://jstock.org/) on both my desktop and Android mobile device.

Assignment

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Create a PowerPoint presentation to address the question below. Your PowerPoint presentation should be 8-12 slides, and developed as if you are presenting to fellow colleagues within the IT industry. 

Discuss whether cognitive overload is a problem in your work or education. Based on your experience, what personal and organizational solutions can you recommend for this problem?

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