Assessment Task 1
Develop Goals and Conduct a Personal SWOT Analysis: Individual
SWOT Analysis is a useful technique that helps identify your strengths and weaknesses, and analyse the opportunities and threats that flow from them. Personal SWOT analysis can help uncover opportunities that you would not otherwise have spotted.
Using the worksheet provided, conduct a personal SWOT analysis identifying major strengths, major weaknesses, potential opportunities and potential threats. Write a brief summary of the outcomes of the analysis.
A SWOT analysis should be prepared within the context of specific career objectives and goals. SWOT analysis can be used in a range of situation, including personal, academic and professional aspirations. In the business context, strengths and weaknesses are often internal to an organisation, while opportunities and threats generally relate to external factors. For this reason, SWOT is sometimes called Internal-External Analysis and the SWOT Matrix is sometimes called an IE Matrix.
Goal setting is a powerful process for thinking about your ideal personal or professional future, and for motivating yourself to turn them into reality. Set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time- bound) goals that motivate you and help you focus on where you have to concentrate your efforts.
For the purpose of this task, use this tool as a personal analysis;
1) Set at least two broad personal goals that you would like to achieve over the next 1-3 years
2) Set SMART objectives
3) Research the job role/position, skill or ability that you aim to achieve and take notes on specific requirements and expectations (e.g. criteria)
4) Analyse your current strength and weaknesses against the criteria and identify opportunities and threats emerging from your analysis
5) Record them into the SWOT Analysis chart provided
6) Write a brief (at least one A4 sheet, singles-spaced) summary of your analyses, including
You may consider this from both a personal/internal perspective and an external perspective based on your current experiences in academic life, workplace, or working in groups.
The summary report should be word-processed and written in a reflective style.
Assessment Task 2
Team Project: Collaborative Project Plan
A Collaborative work culture is a process governed by a set of norms and behaviours that helps maximise individual contribution in the way in which people collectively explore ideas to generate solutions that extend beyond the limited vision of a single person. Organisations worldwide thrive to implement such a culture based on share values and goals.
Components such as mutual respect, trust, shared vision, and collective intelligence and skills make collaborative environment work.
In this team-based assessment task, you and your team will be required to develop a project plan that relies on collaborative work. To create an organisational and real-life context, you will be provided with an organisational profile/scenario, to assume the respective role plays. The organisational profile/scenario given in this task is a proposed scenario and your team will have the flexibility to select any other similar profile/scenario - especially any organisation your team members are familiar with - in consultation with your trainer/assessor.
Task
Recently, the company has received a new contract/project from a major corporate client to customise implement a new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system to improve productivity. The company has taken this opportunity to try to start a new collaborative approach within the company; rather than allocating the project to an individual expert.
Assume that your team has been set up as a project team by the senior management, and asked to prepare a project plan that shows how the available skills, knowledge, and expertise can best be utilised for different parts of the project. The new system will require;
- Planning
- Modelling
- Coding
- Testing
- Implementation
- Monitoring
Based on the information provided, as a team, prepare a project plan that at a minimum includes the following structure;
- Background/context (from the information provided)
- Goals and objectives
- Key stakeholders (internal and external stakeholders)
- Project overview
- Project scope and key tasks (breakdown of key project tasks and milestones) - A workplan outlining tasks and priorities for each member (i.e. Individual workplans)
- Role and responsibilities
- Key performance indicators (KPIs to measure individual performance)
- Collaborative strategy (e.g. communication plan) and strategic networks
- Strategies for effective work relationships (diversity, cultural sensitivity, interpersonal styles etc.)
- Contingency - e.g. Conflict management strategies
- Project timeline and resources
- Legislative/regulatory requirements
The focus of the plan must on the "collaborative" approach, highlighting/discussing how various ideas and
information will be captured as a collective knowledge.
The team will need to allocate tasks between the members; and ensure that all the members equally contribute (a signed team statement will be required as part of final submission). For the purpose of this task, your trainer/assessor will play the role of the management representative.
The project plan should be developed and submitted as a formal business documents (word-processed), ensuring appropriate structuring and content flow.
Assessment Task 3
Project: Professional Development Plan: Individual
This project is aimed at developing and enhancing key competency elements of this units as well as underpinning the required knowledge and skills as part of overall learning outcomes.
Professional development planning is the process of creating an action plan based on awareness, values, reflection, goal-setting and planning for professional development within the context of a career, education or self-improvement. It involves identifying what skills you need to learn, the aspects of yourself needs to be improved, abilities that are you lacking and areas which needs to be given priority for improvement.
In this project, you are required to develop a "Professional Development Plan" based on your goals and objectives (Assessment Task 1) and your experience in working in the team project in Assessment Task 2. You would have completed Assessment Tasks 1 and 2 in this unit before commencing this project. Consult with your trainer/assessor to ensure that you can proceed with this task.
Project Tasks
1. Analyse the information gathered in SWOT analysis (Assessment Task 1) and identify specific weaknesses that impinge upon your professional goals.
2. Take an online personality test (e.g. Myers-Briggs) and analyse results (link will be provided by your trainer/assessor)
3. Develop strategies to achieve your goals, including how you plan to achieve work-life balance
4. Develop an action plan to put strategies into action
5. Identify resource requirements and set time lines
6. Prioritise your tasks and prepare a calendar (paper based or electronic) for next two months Your Professional Development Plan may use the following structure;
a. Introduction/Background
b. SWOT Analysis
c. Long term and Short-Term Goals and Objectives
d. Strategies to Achieve the Objectives
e. Strategies to achieve work-life balance
f. Resources Required
g. Key Actions (How the strategies are implemented)
h. Key Priorities and time lines
Assessment Task 4
Knowledge Test
Q1. What does SWOT stand for? Describe one other similar self-analysis tool that can be helpful in the professional development process.
Q2. What does KPI stand for? Develop at least two KPIs for the job role you perform or have performed in the past. If you have never worked, developed the KPIs for an Administrative Manager.
Q3. What is a performance management system? Describe key elements of a performance management system
Q4. Describe two prioritisation techniques with examples.
Q5. Describe at least five management work practices that can help improve work performance of your team and yourself.
Q6. What are major barriers in time management? List at least five-time management principles.