Business Project Management Assignment Brief

Assessment 2 PowerPoint slides

1. Project Key dates;
2. Project Objectives;
3. Project Assumptions;
4. Cost benefits;
5. WBS, OBS, (Define the project team roles and responsibilities, please complete this exercise via MS Project);
6. Critical Path (from the WBS using MS Project);
7. Team Organization Structure;
8. Communication Plan;
9. Risk Plan and Register Risks;
10. And finally closing plan;
11. For WBS, OBS and other large documents please upload them to an online storage (i.e. Dropboxor Skydive…etc) and later add the Drop box or Sky Drive link(s) in the PowerPoint slide(s) for the specific slide title.

From the Policy on Plagiarism

• The majority (95%) of your written work should be in your own words.
• Cutting and pasting large sections of text from the Internet or a book (even with referencing) is an example of plagiarism and will automatically incur a zero grade.
• Direct quotes should be in quotation marks with a page number & Year reference to the original.
• Each sentence or paragraph that has been written from researching sources should contain a reference.
• If you are unsure of what constitutes plagiarism, check with the Unit Coordinator (Tomayess Issa) before submitting work for assessment.
• Resubmission of a plagiarized assignment will not be permitted.

Case study – CCC Fashion Company LTD

CCC is a significant Western Australian fashion business. It has experienced strong growth for several years. Through its clever fashion marketing and astute acquisitions, it has projected growth of 15% pa revenues for each of the next 7 years. Last year the business had revenues of $90 Million. The company is very profitable and has good reserves of cash and lines of credit. Physically, the business consists of offices for administration, marketing (Online and Traditional) and fashion facility,  which  while  fully  paid  is  very  expensive  to  operate  compared  to modern facilities.  The main office is in the city.  While it owns this property, it believes it can realize $10 Million through its sale. As well, the business has 12 branches scattered throughout the city with total annual rental of $0.9Million. A preliminary plan has been developed to improve efficiency and allow for continued growth.

The elements of the plan are:

• The  business  will  relocate  all  its  current  facilities  to  one,  situated  in  an  industrial centre on the edge of the city.  The total land acquisition costs will be $3.2 Million and $9 Million for the office and administration, marketing (Online and Traditional), and   fashion facilities including the office internal and external design.  The land will allow growth for at least 20 years projected and the planned facilities will allow growth for at least 5 years;
• A new IT system will be introduced.  It is an off-the-shelf system widely used in the industry, and will integrate all administration, marketing (Online and Traditional), and fashion functions of the business.  IT hardware will be moved from the old premises  (this  was  upgraded  only  last  year  and  is  thought  to  have  the  capacity required).  However existing communications services will need to be transferred, new  processes  built  (the  new  system  works  differently  from  the  old  one),  and implementation, testing, evaluation and training arranged.  The new IT system will cost $1.9 Million to purchase.    In  addition,  consultants  from  the  software  vendor estimate  their  team can  configure  the  systems  and  oversee  the  implementation  requirements  in  8 months – 4 months of configuration in their offices and 4 months of on-site support of the in-house project team.  Their team will charge a fixed fee once the scope is finalised and this is estimated at $130,000 per month.
• The plan stipulates that there must be no disruption administration, marketing strategy, and fashion functions of the business, so this suggested the transfers be completed over a weekend only.

                                                                        

                                                                           

                                                                                                              

Your Role

The CEO of CCC fashion Ltd has heard that your “BPM501 Group”small consulting company is the best company to project manage this project.  She calls you in for a meeting and after the usual pleasantries and cups of tea you get down to business.

She is so impressed with you that she gives you the assignment on the spot, and is happy to pay you what you want (so you will of course add that in to your costing).  However she warns that you must succeed and will “never work in this town again if it goes wrong”.  The stakes are high!
Between you and the CEO you agree to do the following:

• Detail the business case, since it is currently quite general.  You agree but realise you will need to do research on the electronic products and the technologies you are dealing with.
• ?You will plan the details of the project.  You are allowed to choose its design (for instance you may have a highly outsourced team, or you may nominate some sub-projects, etc).  Whatever plan you choose, you undertake to provide the lowest cost/shortest implementation possible.  You are allowed to outsource but will also be supplied internal staff as required. You realise straight away this will require you to:
  • Produce a WBS, OBS and tasks using MS Project (or equivalent);
  • Design the tasks so that critical path duration is minimised;
  • Determine the cost benefit;
  • Determine and assign resources;
  • Select your team, policies and team structure;
  • A risk plan and register of risks;
  • A communication plan
  • A closing plan
  • You will produce a project charter in a format that is suitable for presentation to the board.  Your business case will be incorporated into the charter.  Because this is to be presented to the board you decide to do this in no more than 20PowerPoint slides rather than a traditional report. 
  • You will be sure that scope, project design, milestones, risk plans, risk registers and team design are all represented summarised from other steps detailed above.

This assessment is targeting the following Curtin’s Graduate Attributes:

• Collaborative Team Working
• Critical thinking skills
• Applied Discipline Knowledge and Skills

This evaluation is designed to encourage you to think about and understand how well you and your pair performed the team activity in order for you to develop these important skills.
Research indicates that students who reflect on their performance have more control over future performance of targeted skill(s), are better able to articulate their progress and demonstrate increased self-confidence in a range of situations.

The 15 marks will be allocated as follows:

• Quality of the responses in the Evaluation Schedules
• For the timely completion of both Evaluation Schedules (A & B)
• Lecturer mark for the Group functioning as determined by
• Your information that you have provided on your own contribution to this assignment
• the compilation of group perspectives on peer performance
• Draft notes/resources
• The organisation of these forms and materials

Note: the lecturer mark is where the lecturer can reward effort, contribution and leadership capacity on an individualised basis, however, all students have the capacity to receive full marks on this component of the assessment if s/he has proved a superior contribution to the group functioning.

As this is an assessable task you need to understand/follow the instructions:

• These evaluation forms are confidential and enable the lecturer to get an insight into how well the team/group process functioned and to track your contribution. Fill out this evaluation on yourself and your group members (peers) honestly and submit to the blackboard Peer Evaluation, as well make sure to submit with the same document your draft notes/resources as PDF.
• Ensure to put your name on the Self/Peer Evaluation Schedule (A) and your pair members’ name on the Self/Peer Evaluation Schedule (B).
• Your Lecturer will read your group’s work and identify how well the pair functioned. This will also reveal if he/she needs to make any organisational changes to the activity the next semester.
• Please Note:  This is your opportunity to tell the lecturer if there were any problems with the pair interactions, division of workload etc.,  so be as honest as you can. Even if your group did not function well, you have the capacity to earn the individual marks if you made every effort to complete the assignment well.
• Your feedback will be collated with your peer and marked according to insights provided about what you learned from doing this experience, honesty of responses and level of completion.