Objectives

This assignment examines the management of an individual project and as such will draw upon the skills, concepts and models we have discussed in the course to apply them in a real-world setting.

The exercise is designed to illustrate the practical challenges involved in managing the project, including the evaluation of good practice and/or problem areas for the project. Analysis of the project should make use of models, concepts and frameworks from the course lectures and your wider reading.

Project selection

Select a project where you can collect and analyze sufficient secondary (and/or primary) data to derive meaningful and strong insights. The project may be in the public, private or third sector.  This is not a typical research project, so sources may be from your selected organizations website, your knowledge of the project, government and consultancy reports as well as journal articles.

When analyzing your chosen project, you could consider some of the following issues (remember, its important to focus you work!):

Project objectives and scope
Assessment of how the project was organized and delivered
Evaluation of how stakeholders were managed
Assessment of approaches to managing risk and failure
Why was the project a success or failure?
Identification of problem areas and/or areas of good practice
Identification of lessons learnt that can be transferred to other projects
Your report should be 2000 words (10%) and use reference style APA v6. It should be typed with a font size 12, 1.5 spacing and must look professional. Your report needs to be well-structured, divided into numbered sections that correspond logically to your chosen structure and presentation. You should also include an overall introduction and conclusion.

The report should focus on 1-2 key project management issue(s) (e.g. project scoping, risk management, stakeholder management, project learning, project delivery, project planning, etc) which you should select after careful investigation (Remember, focusing down on topics will allow for greater depth in your analysis and recommendations). Please underline your investigation of project data (e.g. company reports, government reports, project case studies, interviews, etc.) with appropriate academic references to strengthen your argument. An essential feature of the report is to illustrate how theoretical constructs or models can help to explain the actions of organisations, project managers, or key stakeholders in practice. You are therefore advised to read widely. In fact, unless you have read and referenced at least 10 discrete references, it is unlikely that you have done sufficient reading.

The word limit includes the main text (including in-text references, tables and figures) but not the list of references at the end of your report. The main text starts with the first word in the introduction/background section and ends at the last word in your conclusion section. The word limit does not include the title, abstract, table of contents, exec summary if you decide to have one, reference list or appendices (I would not expect a long list of appendices.). Sticking to a strict word limit is an important skill for you to acquire, so make sure that you write in a concise and focused manner.