Project Management MGT8022: Assignment: Tips & Hints
1. Choose your project and get a copy of its business case
- Select your project that you will use for assignment 1 and 2. It may be a project you have been involved in or a case study project you find in a text book.
- Make some notes on the size (number of stakeholders, budget), sector (e.g. construction, IT, education), and other characteristics of the project. You can use this in step 5.
- Ensure you have a copy of your selected project's business case, or what could be considered to be the business case.
2. Find relevant literature on the content of a project business case
- Using the USQ Library catalogue search for literature on project business cases. You are looking for a book/s or article/s that describes the content in a project business case.
- To assist you in finding information, you can access Finding Information Tutorials from the library: https://www.usq.edu.au/library/getting-help/help-for-students
Click on the 'Finding Information Tutorials' link.
3. COMPARE your project's business case to what you find in the literature
- Compare the contents of a project business case as indicated in the literature with the content in your project's business case.
- A table can be a useful thinking tool to undertake this comparison. You might structure your table like this. Remember you will have many rows of analysis (not just two as shown here).
|
Required content per the literature
|
Was this in the project business case?
|
If not in business case, what it would have shown
|
If in business case, why it was important
|
|
Options analysis
|
Yes - 3 different options are compared
|
|
Enables ROI on investment to be assessed objectively
|
|
Anticipated benefits
|
Some coverage in the business case - non-financial benefits not discussed
|
Did not allow for comprehensive cost- benefit analysis
|
|
- You do not need to include this table in your essay. But it will inform your writing of your essay (refer step 4).
4. WRITE up your comparison into an ESSAY format
- Before you begin, make sure you understand 'what is an essay'. For more information:
http://www.usq.edu.au/learningcentre/assignment-skills/writing-assignments/essay-writing
- An essay has an introduction and conclusion - but leave these for now (refer step 5). In this step, just focus on writing your comparison (the 'body' of your essay).
- Use your table (from step 3) to guide the structure of your essay's argument. You could have a paragraph for each row of your table. Order your paragraphs logically - perhaps in the order of content recommended in the literature.
- The following is a suggested structure for each paragraph in your essay:
- Topic sentence: what element of the business case is this paragraph about (e.g. options analysis)?
- Recommended best practice: what does the literature say about this part of the business case? What should be included in this section? Why? Make sure you cite (reference) the literature you are using.
- Comparison to the literature: what did your project 'do' or 'not do' in comparison to what is recommended in the literature for this part of the business case?
- Conclusion/recommendation: Given the comparison you have made, what recommendations would you make to the project/organisation? Is there something they should be doing differently for this section of the business case? What benefits would that change provide? Or perhaps there is something they should continue doing?
5. Write the introduction and conclusion of your essay
- In your introduction highlight the purpose of your essay (to compare the business case to recommendations in the literature), provide some information on the project for which you are analysing the business case (refer step 1), and summarise the content you will critically analyse (this will be the topic of each of the paragraphs you have written in step 4).
- In your conclusion highlight the findings of your comparison and the recommendations. You can draw these from the last sentences of each paragraph you have written in step 4.
6. Proof-read and finalise your assignment
- Check you have followed the formatting requirements for the assignment.
- Proof-read and edit your work.
- Check you have referenced all your citations (from the literature) correctly.