School of Project Management
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BUSM4613 Project Management Techniques
Assessment 3a: Project Management Techniques Option 2
| Assessment Type: | Individual Project Plan Thursday of Week 7, 23:59 Melbourne time 30% | Word limit: | N/A |
| Due date: Weighting |
Overview
The aim of this assignment is to understand and apply the concept of systematic project planning and scheduling to an event/project using MS Project.
Learning Outcomes
CLO 1 Select and apply appropriate project management techniques to manage project duration and cost
CLO 2 Analyse and apply principles of cost control, cash flow planning and financial administration to ensure effective project management
CLO 3 Control project cost and duration
Upon successful completion of this assessment you will be able to apply planning techniques on any kind of projects.
Assessment details
Brief
You work for South West Health – a community health service comprising four health clinics distributed throughout South Western Victoria. The organisation is keen for all of its staff to undergo Workplace training, including modules such as: Privacy and Information Management, Employment and Equal Opportunity, and Occupational Health and Safety.
For this reason, SW Health is looking to incorporate these modules into its already existing Learning Management System (LMS) and has thus begun the LMS Upgrade Project. Note however, that two of these sites are earmarked for closure due to a lack of demand for health services in those locations; hence the scope of this project only extends to two sites.
The Chief Information Officer wants complete oversight of this high-profile project and thus wants to keep abreast of the project outline. This will require you to give him a time line and estimate of costs, including a Project Schedule using MS Project. The CIO will then be able to secure new funding for this project from the Executive Committee via a Capital Expenditure injection into the ICT Budget.
This is the first time that you’re developing a multi-project plan/schedule. Recently, you have learnt a great deal in using MS Project and are eager to use your skills on this project. You liaise with SW Health’s Project Management Office for guidance, and they happily provide templates and policies which will enable you to make a start with this immediately.
Assessment details (continued)
Brief
Guide to Standard Rates: You may change if you wish
You think of two apparent ways of doing the job:
- Deploy this only for one site, with a view to minimising potential problems at both sites at the same time; however, this will greatly increase the time to deliver the overall project, and neither the executive team nor your boss would be happy about it.
- Deploy this to both sites concurrently, but it would possibly increase the risk by impacting on both client sites at once.
You conclude that you need to work on a mixed strategy. You will deploy these modules on a separate instance of the Learning Management System, with a link from the main LMS so that all staff can continue to access the main system in case of a catastrophic failure with the new modules. If the new system fails, it is still quarantined from the production system allowing access to the existing modules.
You also find out that one of the clinics have out of date hardware, which can’t access the new modules. Where they cannot gain access, you advise your boss to upgrade/purchase newer hardware, but that will obviously cost more.
After some trials you are ready to present your Master Plan (Project file that contains the deployment strategy). Along with your Master Plan you write a project report that highlights:
- How have you optimised the time and the resources?
- What is the duration and cost of the whole project and what is the critical path and what are the critical activities?
- What are the resources required and their numbers for this project according to your plan?
Your boss appreciates your work and is successful in gaining the Capital Expenditure funding required to proceed with this project. The duration and cost that you’ve estimated becomes the baseline, and the budget forecast for the project includes a 10% contingency.
Assessment details (continued)
Brief
The project gets underway.
Unfortunately, the developer leaves the organisation just a day before the project is going to start. It takes your boss a week to arrange a new developer. As she is new to the organisation, it takes her at least 2 days longer than planned to finish the job.
While the field support technicians are checking to ensure that existing hardware at both sites is patched and ready to access the new system, it comes to light that popup blockers installed as a safety measure on all machines at SW Health, interfere with these new training modules. You stop the project for that day, while the Desktop Virtualization team deploys a different version of the blocker overnight from head office, and so you complete the rest of the job the next day.
You also find out that the new popup blocker requires an alternative login method to access the modules, so documenting this process and training users takes at least 3 days more than what you have planned for. You constantly update the project to monitor the changes. When the project is approximately half way through, your boss asks you to develop a formal progress report so that it can be sent to the Executive Team. This report presents the progress of the project and contains the following:
- Current status of the project
- Tracking Gantt Chart
- Variances tables for time and cost.
Assume:
- Project Start Date;
- Working time as 8hrs/day from 8:30am -5:30pm with one-hour break;
- Any missing data such as Public holidays, Xmas Period and state this upfront in your Planning Report.
Referencing guidelines
You must acknowledge all the courses of information you have used in your assessments.
Refer to the RMIT Easy Cite referencing tool to see examples and tips on how to reference in the appropriated style. You can also refer to the library referencing page for more tools such as EndNote, referencing tutorials and referencing guides for printing.
Use RMIT Harvard referencing style for this assessment.
Submission format
Upload as one single folder via the Assignments submission page within Canvas.
Academic integrity and plagiarism
Academic integrity is about honest presentation of your academic work. It means acknowledging the work of others while developing your own insights, knowledge and ideas.
You should take extreme care that you have:
Acknowledged words, data, diagrams, models, frameworks and/or ideas of others you have quoted (i.e. directly copied), summarised, paraphrased, discussed or mentioned in your assessment through the appropriate referencing methods,
Provided a reference list of the publication details so your reader can locate the source if necessary. This includes material taken from Internet sites.
If you do not acknowledge the sources of your material, you may be accused of plagiarism because you have passed off the work and ideas of another person without appropriate referencing, as if they were your own.
RMIT University treats plagiarism as a very serious offence constituting misconduct. Plagiarism covers a variety of inappropriate behaviours, including:
Failure to properly document a source
Copyright material from the internet or databases Collusion between students.
For further information on our policies and procedures, please refer to the University website.
Assessment declaration
When you submit work electronically, you agree to the Assessment declaration.
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