MGMT90280 Managerial Decision Analytics Assignment 2 – Group Assignment (4,000 words)
Assignment 2 Specifications – 30%
Many organisations use Business Analytics to explore data, discover patterns and solve critical business problems. This assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate that you can effectively analyse and solve a business problem and then provide recommendations to the organisation. As a minimum requirement each group must demonstrate the implementation of a major analytical technique from each type of business analytics in their reports:
- Descriptive analytics (e.g., Descriptive Statistics and/or Descriptive Data Mining)
- Predictive analytics (e.g., Regression Modelling, Monte Carlo Simulation, Time Series Analysis & Forecasting, and/or Predictive Data Mining)
- Prescriptive analytics (e.g., Linear Programming, Integer Linear Programming, Nonlinear Programming, and/or Monte Carlo Simulation)
Sample Process:
- For example, the problem a student has chosen is a human resource scheduling problem at IBM Australia (Dockland office in Melbourne). The company wishes to make some employment changes and redundancy to reduce employment costs due to the impact of covid-19. However, the firm also wishes to have enough employees that will allow them to fulfill company needs (for on-going and future projects).
- In the initial stages of the student’s analysis, the student may perform relevant descriptive analytics by using descriptive statistics and/or descriptive data mining techniques such as clustering and association to understand more about the employees at IBM Docklands.
- A student may then decide to perform predictive analytics to detect if employees are thinking of quitting or may quit. The student uses several different variables in their logistic regression model to make that prediction.
- Based on the student’s predictive analytics outcome, the student uses the information as inputs to their prescriptive analytics to minimise human resource costs by finding an optimal employee schedule that fulfills current needs.
Note: For your report, you may perform more than one business analytical approach of each type. However, the implementation and analysis of the business analytic techniques for your business problem must flow logically throughout your report.
It is strongly recommended you try to find real data for your problem. An open public database, Kaggle, can be used to extrapolate the data for many organisations. You can also try to search for the data you need by using Google Dataset Search. That said, if the data are simply impossible or too sensitive to obtain, you can use hypothetical/approximate data. In this case, you must justify the reason why you use those data, and it is preferable to provide references for the data you use (e.g., the previous literature, annual reports, data from similar organisations for which data are available, industry-level data, etc.).
1. Group Formation:
- Students must form their own group with at least four but no more than five students in each group to work on and complete the assignment. The group members must come from the same registered workshop. Students must self-enroll their groups in Canvas by the end of Week 6.
2. Expected Contents of Group Report:
- Introduction – organization background, description of the business problem, justification of selection, etc.
- Literature review – summary of the findings from 6 peer-reviewed articles that are related to your problem.
- Synopsis – description of the method used to collect the journal articles, such as databases, searching and filtering criteria, etc.
- Strengths – analysis of the strengths of the articles with respect to the organisation’s evaluation criteria (e.g., things from the articles that you can borrow for your analysis).
- Weaknesses – analysis of the weaknesses of the articles with respect to the evaluation criteria (e.g., things from the articles that do not fit well with your problem as well as those that you should improve for your analysis).
- Summary of Literature Review – Summary of the identified strengths and weaknesses.
- Methodology – description and illustration of the business analytical approaches for the problem.
- Implementation – formulation of the problem by using different business analytical approaches, application of Excel Solver Add-in, Excel Analysis ToolPak, and/or Analytic Solver Basic for Excel.
- Discussions and Conclusions – suggestions for courses of action to the selected company as well as the evaluation of the business analytical approaches.
- References
- Appendices – including the minutes/notes of meetings.
3. Marking Criteria:
| Criteria | Possible Mark |
| Identification and description of the problem to be analysed | 3 |
| Summary of literature review | 3 |
| Description of the business problem and application of the business analytical approaches to analyse and solve the problem | 15 |
| Suggestions for courses of action to the organisation, and critical evaluation of the business analytical approaches | 7 |
| Structure and presentation. Use of appropriate language, spelling, grammar, and punctuation | 2 |
| Total | 30 |
- Word Limits:
- The total length of the group report is a maximum of 4,000 words (excluding figures, tables, references, and appendices).
5. Presentation:
- It is important to give attention to spelling, grammar, and punctuation in order to avoid ambiguity and confusion. The assignment must be word processed in 12- point type and double-spaced. Please leave a margin of 3cm on both the left- and right-hand side for the marker’s comments.
- Students can include relevant graphs, tables, and other exhibits as appendices. They must be clearly labelled and will not be included in the word count. However, your reasons for including these exhibits must be made clear in the main body of the assignment.
Oral Presentation of Assignment 2 Specifications – 5%
The presentation is designed to provide student groups an opportunity to orally share their work (for Group Assignment) with their class as well as learn from other groups’ work, and to demonstrate effective communication of analytical techniques and findings with non-experts. This oral presentation contributes 5% to the overall mark. No file submission is required.
1. Due Dates and Presentation Mode:
All groups will present their work in the final workshop in Week 12. Your group can choose to either:
- Present live; OR
- Pre-record the presentation and play during your last workshop. If you choose this option, make sure that the video is clear and smooth. Also, you still need to turn up in the workshop and play the recorded presentation for your group.
2. Presenters:
- The group is completely free to choose which members deliver the presentation. One member may deliver the entire presentation, or each member of the group may participate in the presentation, or any combination of members is acceptable.
- Regardless of who presents on behalf of the group, all members will receive the same score, unless you formally communicate and raise issues/concerns/problems with a specific group member to your workshop lecturer and/or subject coordinator well before the due date of Group Assignment submission in Week 11. In such cases, students who do not contribute to a group assignment may be allocated a lower mark or assigned a mark of zero in presentation as well as group assignment.
3. Presentation Content:
- All groups are expected to first introduce their selected organisation, the business problem studied, and organisation requirements/evaluation criteria. Second, you are expected to summarise the literature review. Third, you will present and describe your business analytics approaches for the problem, followed by a brief live demo on how the process is implemented (note that there is no need to show every step of the analysis, just the key steps). Last, but not least, you will discuss the managerial contributions of your work.
4. Presentation Length:
- Please note that the ideal length of time for the presentation is 10 minutes, with +/- 1 minute flexibility. This means that the presentation needs to be well prepared, rehearsed and coordinated by the group members.
5. Marking Criteria:
| Criteria | Possible Mark |
| Structure of presentation, communication and group presentation skills | 5 |
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