Critical understanding the principles of project management
Assignment due dates and the suggested study timetable provided here apply to the Australian study period. These may be varied for students studying elsewhere. Please confirm dates with your local tutor.
Assignment submission
Please note that all assignments are to be submitted online via the assignment submission facility of the MySCU site for this unit. For information about how to submit assignments online please see the document ‘Assignment online submission a “How-to” for students’ in the Assignments section of your MySCU site. If after reading this document you are still uncertain about the submission process please contact the Student Support Team for clarification.
You must use the electronic Assignment Cover Sheet provided in the Assignments section of MySCU. Download this cover sheet, fill in your details and then make this sheet the first page of your assignment – do not send it as a separate document.
Your assignments must be submitted as Word documents with .doc or .docx extension, text documents with .rtf extension or as .pdf documents. If you wish to submit in any other file format please discuss this with your lecturer well before the assignment submission date.
As part of a University initiative to support the development of academic integrity, assessments may be checked for plagiarism, including through an electronic system, either internally or by a plagiarism checking service, and be held for future checking and matching purposes.
My Project
It is imperative that within the first two weeks of the session, students form teams of 3 students. Each member of the team will put forth suggestions for a suitable project and the team will make a selection from these proposed projects.
There is only one major focus for this unit, which is a progressive compilation of a project report for a project that the team has agreed upon. This project is referred to as My Project in the unit but you are encouraged to give it a suitable name that describes your project.
Purpose of the assignment
The purpose of the assignment is to meet the following objectives of this unit:
· demonstrate a critical understanding of the principles of project management
· identify, interpret and apply the principles of project management to effectively manage My Project
· critically analyse, interpret and apply the project management knowledge areas to the various phases of My?Project as appropriate
· identify, assess and evaluate all the phases associated with a project life cycle and demonstrate an understanding of the activities and interrelationships critical to the successful completion of My Project.
The My Project assignment will be submitted in two parts.
Assignment 1: Project Charter, Communication plan and WBS
Due: Wednesday 12 November 2014 (Week 4)
Length: 2,000 words excluding appendix
Weighting: 20%
Project Charter
The Project Charter should explain the background of the organisation where this project will be carried out, the objectives of the project and the importance of this project to the organisation. The project team should also include a Business Case, Milestone Schedule, as well as any major problems or anticipated Risks with this project if they are known at this stage. The textbook provides detailed examples of what needs to be included in the Project Charter. These examples will assist the project team in the development of the Project Charter for My Project.
The project that your team uses could be from one of the following categories depending on the type of business a student is involved in:
· an organisational project that a student is involved in as the organisation’s main line of business – to manage projects for your organisation or on behalf of others
· an activity that a student is convinced would benefit from being handled as a project
· an activity in which a student was involved in the past that was not carried out as a project, but one which you believe would have been managed better as a project. If you use this option you should describe how you would execute this activity now using the knowledge gained through this unit.
Note: Students will get maximum benefit from doing this assignment if it is based on a real project. It is also suggested that you do not use an IT project. If you are unable to work on a real project please discuss with your tutor for suggestions.
