Project Management

Tutorial for Week 2

1. Readings:

Mandatory Readings

• Kerzner Chapter 1;
• Egelstaff (2013) Academic assignments: Critical thinking and writing critically;

• Additional readings will be made available when the course starts

Make sure you have done the readings.

2. Watch recordings:

3. Answer following Questions to reflect and assist in your Portfolio

• Put in your own words what you think Project Management is.

• Make a list of three activities that you do each day or each week which can be regarded as a Project
• Now, what is Project Success                                                                                                                                                                  Order Now

• Do you know of any projects that are successful? Describe one? How is it successful?
• Is Project Success the same as Project Management? Why?
• Make a list of three problems of Project Management?

• Can anyone be a good project manager? Do you think that functional managers would make good project managers?

• Project managers are usually dedicated and committed to the project. Who should be “looking over the shoulder” of the project manager to make sure that the work and requests are also in the best interest of the company? Does your answer depend on the priority of the project?

4. Now prepare your Portfolio for Week 2 Remember to use the template.

You will need to create weekly portfolios in your tutorial and submit them online. At the end of the term, you will also need to submit a consolidated portfolio.

Use the answers to your Questions above to provide evidence of previous and current experience.

Your task is to write a weekly portfolio reflecting upon your learnings from the prior week. In your portfolio you will identify:

• the learning outcomes and module/topic of the course,

• a description of your experience, including reading samples or records,

• your learning from your experiences, and

• any supporting documentation of prior or current learning.

You will notice that the questions that I have asked you in the tutorial help you to create this portfolio.

You will use the portfolio template provided on the Moodle web site for this weekly portfolio. You should upload your completed weekly portfolio to the Moodle web site after the tutorial.

Your portfolio should contain a coherent, but necessarily restricted review of the academic literature related to the project management topics for each week. You should also include a weekly reference list formatted in the prescribed Harvard style. You are also encouraged to include a bibliography.

This assessment item involves researching the topics to enhance your understanding of each concept through an utilisation of academic literature and secondary sources. Whilst you must use the recommended textbooks and web links, you should also refer to other sources on the Moodle web site and additional relevant peer reviewed academic journal articles of your choosing.

Your weekly portfolio can be as long or as short as you want it to be. It is your portfolio and shows your development of understanding during the course. Naturally, this will make the portfolio different for everyone. Each student’s background, education, current and past work experiences is what makes it different. Each student’s personal researches will be different.

What you need to do is to give yourself enough time to reflect and show how you have thought and come to grips with the ideas that address the learning outcomes of the course. The amount of time you should be allocating to the course is 12 to 16 hours per week (which includes writing the portfolio). So there should be a fair bit of time for you to make the reflections and reach a depth of insight that will make the portfolio meaningful.

With each weeks portfolio that you submit you do not include the writing that you made for a prior week. Instead you use the same portfolio template using only the section for the week you are writing about. In other words each week’s portfolio is a reflection upon that week. You should however, revisit the whole of the course learning outcomes each week. The portfolio for any previous week is a reflection of your insights and thoughts for that week. Once you upload the portfolio then leave it for that week. Over the duration of the course you will find that there is a development and change of your ideas as you study the material. You will then have opportunity at the end of the course to consolidate everything and show how you have gained the insights that the course is seeking to provide. At the end of the course you should review your weekly portfolios and consolidate them into a single submission. You should make a personal reflection in this submission. This is the assessment that gets marked. 

It is to your benefit to have the personal discipline to make sure that you do not get behind. If you are allocating 12 or 16 hours per week for the course then there is plenty of time for the portfolio. If you find that one week you slip then ok, but the course is fundamentally planned so that you need to allocate 12 to 16 hours each week. Two hours lost in one week means that you need to do 14 to 18 hours the next!

The course is straight forward, but there are lots of web sites to visit and material to download. The text books are only part of the story and you won’t be able to do the course with just the text books. Unfortunately, much of the material is written from a North American perspective. You will need to consider other industry sectors and also to be able to translate the learning outcomes into an Australian or other cultural perspective. Therefore, you will need to download other files and visit web sites to be able to gather the material you need in your portfolio.

There are no bonus points for getting the portfolio perfect from the first week! In fact the portfolio for the first week is much more likely to be an amateurish attempt. It is unlikely that you’ll really know what you’re doing in the first and second week, and if you pretended you do then it would be hard to believe you anyway! Understanding and familiarity will only develop over time. As you do the portfolios’ each week and keep revisiting the learning outcomes and adding the course material then you will gain insights required. Unless you do that on a weekly basis you won’t have the appropriate perspective to make the journey and reach the destination by the end of the course.

Ensuring you have accurate references is important and will allow the marker to easily identify where your portfolio maps to the course or other peer reviewed material. Also you need to show how you have made critical reflection on the material and added your own unique insights.