PE6002
Project Management
Assignment
Guidance
This document is intended to provide you with
guidance for completing your PE6002 Project Management assignment. It lists the
different sections of the report and outlines the expectations for each
section. Please pay particular attention to the final ‘submission’ information.
The report has 4 sections:
1.
Introduction
to the project (10%) Suggested length: 350 words
2.
Project
management concepts, theories, and approaches (20%) Suggested
length: 650 words
3.
Project
management document package (40%) Since no text in addition to the documents
(appendices) is required, this section does not count towards the overall
length of the report.
4.
Critical
appraisal of project management documents (30%) Suggested
length: 1000 words.
There is no requirement to add any other
sections such as an executive summary, conclusions etc.
The expectations for the 4 sections are
as follows.
Section 1: Introduction to the project
In this section, you need to provide
the background to the organisation in which the project is set and give a broad
overview of the specific project chosen for your assignment work – this is the
‘Project X’ we refer to in the module. Tell
us why this project is important and what it aims to achieve. You may bring in
citations here linking to professional sources relevant to your project or to the
literature.
Section 2: Project management concepts, theories, and approaches
In this section, you need to draw on academic and/or practitioner
articles to discuss the concepts, theories, frameworks or approaches you have
selected to plan, develop, and manage your project. You need to provide
overviews of the chosen concepts, theories, frameworks or approaches, and
explain why and how you apply them in your project. You may want to begin by discussing
the triple/quadruple constraint theory that is relevant to all projects and
then move on to areas of particular relevance to your specific project. For
example, it may be that management of stakeholders is absolutely crucial to
your project so you could describe this by bringing in theoretical models for
this aspect and then say how this is implemented in your specific project. This
section must include theoretical concepts (from the literature, supported by
citations) and also the practical context of your project. You may want to
cover one or two key areas for your project, but don’t try to include
discussion of all the theoretical concepts you have covered in the module –
you’ll run out of space! In terms of writing style, a critical approach is
always preferred to a descriptive one – aim not just to describe
theories/concepts you are introducing but to point out any limitations too.
Section 3: Project management document package
Here you need to provide the project
management document package you have developed. Attach these to your report as
appendices. A full list of the required documents and a brief outline is given below:
Power/Interest Matrix for stakeholders
Include all stakeholders on this diagram and use a
colour coding to indicate whether each stakeholder is likely to be
supportive/neutral/hostile.
Stakeholder Communication plan
Include 4 external and 4 internal stakeholders and
outline how you will communicate with them – including frequency of
communication and type of information communicated.
Statement of Work
There is a useful template for the SoW in Table 5.2
on page 184 of the core textbook by Pinto.
The key parts are the first 2 sections
(‘Description & Scope’ and ‘Approach’) so you should spend most of your
time working on these. Dates for the completion are of milestones are crucial –
these are the dates when key elements of your project (deliverables) will be
done. You might find the other sections of the form useful, particularly 4,5
and 6. Don’t worry about too much detail in section 3, this is meant to be
overview of resources and not an exhaustive list.
Work Breakdown Structure
This should itemise all the activities (work
packages) in your project and show how these group together to form the
deliverables. You can display this as either a ‘tree diagram’ or as a tabular
list.
Responsibility Assignment Matrix
Use the ‘RACI’ system for showing who does what
regarding the activities in your project. I recommend that you work at the
level of individual activities here rather than at the deliverables level.
Budget plan – Activity based cost estimation
Generate a total cost for your project by working
firstly at the level of individual activities and then use this to find the
cost for each deliverable and therefore the total project cost. Be clear on the
specific method you have used for estimating activity costs (eg 3pt estimate,
analogous etc).
Gantt Chart
Show your individual activities on a Gantt chart –
this may extend to more than one page.
Activity on Node network diagram
It is acceptable here to work in terms of the key
deliverables as the nodes, but if you would like to create an AoN diagram that
contains all individual activities as nodes then you can provide this. Bear in
mind that if you have very many activities then showing each as a node may make
the network diagram unmanageable. Make sure you include all the timing
information on the diagram and indicate the critical path and total project
time.
Risk Assessment Matrix
Show the grid which describes the risk rating in
terms of likelihood and consequence and then list as many risks to your project
as you can think of underneath this and rate using the usual likelihood/consequence
method.
Risk Register
Select 5 risks from your list in the previous
document and include these on the register. The crucial section of the register
is to explain how you would react if the risks occurred (mitigation etc).
Section 4: Critical appraisal of project management documents– In this section, you need to critically appraise FOUR of the project management
documents out of the ten you have developed. For the first document that you
choose, you should discuss why the document is useful to the management of the
project and what advantages it brings. You should then discuss any limitations,
shortcomings or disadvantages of the document. You may also want to introduce
alternative ideas for the document or different approaches (or models) that you
might have seen in the literature. Repeat this process for a further three
documents. You should support this section with citations where appropriate. You
can discuss documents that you have already mentioned in section Two but avoid
repetition of ideas/comments already made.
Submission of your assignment
It is expected that all your sections will
be presented within a single Word file with all charts/tables/diagrams incorporated
into this one Word document. If you need to include elements as pictures within
the Word document then please ensure good quality images are used so that they
can be magnified and examined in detail. Only as a very last resort should you
submit separate documents for your assignment and this approach is not
recommended.
