Assignment Brief: Analyse a case study or a live business, suggest an improvement strategy, and plan the implementation of the improvement.
1. Choose an organisation that you work for, or are familiar with. Briefly introduce the organisation and the products and services it provides.
2. Investigate your chosen organisation to evaluate how it is currently performing, and identify three operational areas that require change. Start off by briefly introducing your chosen organisation and explaining what 3 changes you have identified and why you believe they should be made.
3. From the changes that you have identified, select one change that you want to make. Review the literature on project / investment appraisal and identify what methods / criteria can be used to do this. At least 4 academic references are required to underpin this literature review.
From the review, choose the project / Investment appraisal criteria and evaluation method(s) that are appropriate for your changes and organisation
Evaluate all proposed 3 changes, using the same evaluation methods / criteria, and from your analysis choose the change that you will plan to implement
4. Decide upon the approach you will take to manage and implement the change by putting forward a case for using both Radical Change and Continuous Improvement as the means for delivering the required improvements for the organisation, identifying the benefits and disadvantages of using each method.
Review the literature on Radical Change vs Continuous Improvement and identify what criteria you could use to identify which improvement method should be used. At least 4 academic references are required to underpin this literature review.
From the review, choose the criteria that are relevant for your change and organisation
Evaluate your chosen change using the evaluation criteria and...
Recommend your choice of improvement method(s), giving reasons for your choice - Radical Change, Continuous Improvement, or both, and why?
5. Produce a draft Project Plan using MS Project, identifying all the tasks, timescales, dependencies, and resources that are required to implement the change.
Outline the factors that you will consider when constructing your project plan, and apply them to create an initial draft project plan for your chosen change, using MS Project
Explain the major phases of your draft project plan and provide details of the costs and timescales as calculated by MS Project. (full costing and resource capacity planning must be done using MS Project and this must be evidenced within your report)
6. Identify the potential risks to the successful implementation of your Project Plan, and what you would do to mitigate these risks.
Review the literature on Risk Management within projects and identify what criteria you could use to identify barriers and risks, and what evaluation method(s) could be used. At least 4 academic references are required to underpin this literature review.
From the review, choose the risk criteria that are relevant for your change and organisation, and an appropriate evaluation method.
Critically evaluate your chosen change using the risk evaluation criteria and method to identify risks in your draft plan.
Explain what alterations you have had to make to your draft project plan to mitigate the identified risks overcome them
7. Produce a final detailed Project Plan using MS Project, taking account of changes you have had to make as a result of your risk analysis, including an analysis of the impact of your proposed change on the organisation, identifying the costs, benefits and timescales as calculated by MS Project.
8. The full draft plan should be included in the appendices, and the full final plan as part of the main report.
KEY textbook: https://eniuss.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/om_slack_7th_edition.pdf
Assignment Files -
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0awep3sc9da5hri/Assignment.rar?dl=0