Issues, Challenges and Best Practices in Implementing Project Management Principles and Characterist

Part A

This part of the assignment will focus on demonstrating your knowledge and understanding over issues, challenges and best practices in implementing project management principles in real-life business environment. For this part of the assignment, you need to discuss the following points:

• Identify two projects (one successful and another unsuccessful) from a sector of your choice (public, private or third sector). Once you have selected a sector (for example, private sector), the discussion on both successful and unsuccessful projects should be from the same sector (i.e. from the private sector).
• Describe the background of these two projects discussing the context of the project, objectives, key stakeholders and desired outcomes.
• Critically review these two projects and discuss how these two projects are different in terms of the processes used to develop them at different stages of the project life cycle and their final outcomes.
• Critically examine the causes of success and failure of these projects, and discuss how the success / failure of the projects were measured.
• Critically discuss the recommendations you could provide to the project team of the unsuccessful project to successfully achieve their objectives.

Part B

This part of the assignment will focus on your reflection on key characteristics of an effective ‘project manager’ and the skills required to become one. For this part of the assignment, you need to address the following points:

• Critically discuss the key characteristics of an effective project manager and evaluate your skills against these characteristics.
• Identify potential areas for improvement in your skills and discuss how you would plan to improve your skills to become an effective project manager. General Guidelines:

In your essay, you should incorporate your independent thinking and use real-life examples to support your arguments. You are expected to research on project management concepts, models and practices from a wide range of literature. You should provide solid justifications of your arguments by integrating findings from these literatures into your discussion. It is crucial that the discussions should be based on extensive reading of relevant literature, and most importantly on critical reflection on key issues.

You should appropriately cite different sources of literature, including books, journal articles, newspaper reports, business magazines, company reports, corporate websites and other credible sources of information to frame and justify your arguments.

Submission Details:

• The essay should be well structured into logical sections and you should make sure that you write in a focused manner. You should cite a range of literature to frame and justify your arguments.
• You must reference your work correctly using ‘Harvard referencing style’. All references in the main body of the assignment should also be included in the reference list at the end of the assignment. Similarly, all references in the reference list should also be referred back in the main body of the assignment.
• Your essay should be typed with font size 12 or more, and 1.5 or 2-line spacing. You are encouraged to use figures, diagrams and tables where appropriate to better present your discussion.
• The maximum word count excludes title page, table of content, figures, tables, abstract, references and appendices.
• The title page should clearly indicate the module code and name (e.g. BE750- 6-AU or BE750-7-AU) and student registration number.
• This coursework requires only ONLINE submission. You must submit your assignment via FASER. For more details about online submission, refer to FASER.

Plagiarism:

While you are encouraged to discuss assignments with peers and colleagues, the final write-up must be your own work. The assignment must present your own understanding, analysis and conclusion rather than a copy of someone else’s. You must not plagiarise your assignment.

Penalties:

Late penalties will be applied to any work submitted after the deadline. You will also be penalised if you exceed the word count. You should consult the student handbook for further information about penalties.

Marking Guidelines:

Your essay will be evaluated on the basis of your critical understanding of the subject matter; your ability to draw upon relevant literature; Independent thinking and critical analysis; and effective structure and presentation. Follow the EBS marking scheme for more information.