Developing a Project Management Handbook/Report for SMEs in the Industry of Your Choice

Academic Literature Review

The assignment consists of an individual report examining the management of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) real-world project. The assessment exercise is designed to provide students with the opportunity to reflect on their learning and understanding of the course contents and strengthen their ability to link project and programme management theory with practice in the context of a SME.

Develop a project management hand book/report for SMEs in the industry of your choice. The report should clearly establish project objective and characteristics, project planning, project life cycle, project metrics, project leadership and project management tools, common causes of project failure and its impact on the stakeholder, project risk and critical success factors. 

1.Introduction (about 300 words): Use your own words in this section. Explain what is the objective of the chosen project and why you have chosen this SME group. In brief discuss the of future of this sector and a brief introduction of the company selected for the report.

2.Academic Literature Review (about 600 words): You should critically evaluate, recognize, compare and contrast the objectives and characteristics of project/programme management with strategic management and operations management from a SME perspective.

3.Project Planning, Metrics & Tools (about 800 words): Develop a project plan and project life cycle. Define and develop a package of work using product and work breakdown structure. Create planning estimates (e.g. task effort and schedule) using a variety of estimating techniques.

4.Project Leadership (about 300 words): Conceptualise and develop a critical appreciation of the role and attributes of the owner/ project manager, especially their part in contributing to organisational integration and beneficial change in a SME set up.

5.Project Risks and Failure (about 500 words): Critically evaluate an appropriate framework to ascertain the risk analysis of the project to be managed for the SME selected and identify the common causes of project failures and its impact on the stakeholders.

6.Critical Success Factors (about 300 words): Critically evaluate literature review on project success criteria and apply the relevant success factors to the chosen SME.  You are expected to demonstrate the understanding from a holistic perspective available in literature on the critical success factors with reasoning and factual evidence.

7.Conclusion (about 200 words): This should briefly refer back to your task, reflect on the key issues covered in the main text (sections 2 to 6) and summarise the findings.

Structure: You have been asked to produce a written work.

•The title: It should be at the head of the page.

•Content Page

•Written work should be organised under appropriate headings.

•All sections and paragraphs should be structured with care.

•Appendices (if any), which should be numbered. Make sure you refer your reader to them as required

•You are not just presenting information. You should try to persuade your reader that you are right.

Your word count should not include your abstract, contents, reference list or appendices. You should provide your word count at the end of the assignment before the reference list.  Exceeding the word count by more than 10% will result in a penalty of 10% of your marks for your work. If your work is significantly shorter than 3,000 words, then you will probably have failed to provide the reasonable level of detail required.

This coursework’s weight upon the overall module is 100%. There are no other than the assessment components specified in this assessment guide.

There is no formative assessment and students are rather asked to discuss their planned assessment in the provided assessment clinic(s).

No Abstract – Please note that an abstract shall not be added.

Label and Number all figures, diagrams and tables properly.

Appendices: Extensive appendices should be avoided. Pure raw data tables do not add to the word count and may be appropriate to document scattered data sources.