There has been an inadvertent typographical alignment

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There has been an inadvertent typographical alignment. Kindly note that Q1a(iii) and Q1a(iv) should be phrased as follows:

Q1a(iii) Suggest any two (2) ways this team identity can be developed.

Q1a(iv) The CEO is concerned that a substantial 40% of the budget had been allocated for online marketing. By performing bottom-up cost estimation, propose to the CEO how online marketing costs can be reduced. Real evidence must be produced to support your answer

 

 

BUS353 (Online) Project Management Group-based Assignment July 2021 Presentation BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment GROUP-BASED ASSIGNMENT (GBA) This is a group-based assignment. This assignment is worth weightage of assignment in 10% of the final mark for BUS353 Project Management. The cut-off date for this assignment is 22 August 2021, 11:55pm. This assignment comprises two sections: ? Section I: GBA requirements and guidelines ? Section II: GBA questions SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 2 of 9 BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment SECTION I This section outlines the following: 1. GBA Requirements 2. GBA Scoring Guide 3. Information Sources Credibility 1. GBA Requirements This assignment requires to you work collaboratively with your group members to develop skills that are needed to be effective within a team, skills that are important in the real-world. Each GBA group is expected to answer all the GBA questions (refer to Section II of this document) collaboratively as a team and prepare the group report. You should join a GBA group of a maximum of 4 members in your TV course site. If you have not joined a group by end of week 1, your instructor will randomly assign you to a group. You will not be able to switch groups thereafter. This grouping is solely for the purpose of marks allocation. Marks awarded to your assignments are based on the GBA scoring guide and you will receive the equal marks for your group effort. Review the GBA Scoring Guide to ensure that your assignment meet the expectations it contains. You are to submit your group report together with the GBA cover page. Please download the GBA cover page in your TV course site and include all the necessary information (Course Code, Title of the GBA, SUSS PI No., Your Name, and Submission Date) it requires. Your GBA report should have between 3,000 to 3,500 words, excluding the cover page, table of content (if any), references and appendices (if any). Please, do not retype the questions in your report. For the GBA report submission, you and your teammates must appoint a group report submitter. The only additional responsibility of the group report submitter is to upload the GBA report on behalf of the group via the GBA submission link (Turnitin) available in your TV course site. SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 3 of 9 BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment 2. GBA Scoring Guide Marks awarded to your assignment are based on the following guidelines: Rating Criteria Descriptions Critical Thinking and Originality Your answer should: Content 90% 1. demonstrate an in-depth understanding of the relevant topic(s)/concept(s). 2. form a sound reasoning through the development of key points that presented in a clear, logical and succinct manner. 3. be supported by evidence drawn from course materials and other relevant and credible sources. Refer to Information Sources Credibility to ensure you meet the expectation of the GBA. References and Citations 1. Strictly follow the APA formatting and style guidelines, in particular for: o identifying figures, tables and graphs; o referencing or bibliography; o providing adequate in-text citations from course materials and other credible sources and o including the less relevant details in an Appendix. Presentation 10% Note: You can find information about APA formatting and style guidelines on a number of websites. The more useful ones are: ? APA website – Introducing the Basics of Seventh Edition APA Style. See it here. o Focus on the in-text citation, references and Tables and Figures sections ? APA website– You can also go through a very comprehensive tutorial that can be found here. Use of Quotes 1. Use quotes sparingly. 2. Summarise what you have learnt from the resources rather than quoting resources throughout. As a rule of thumb: at least 85% of your report content should be original and a maximum of 15% may come from quotes that you drew from credible external sources. SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 4 of 9 BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment Spelling and Grammar 1. Use, wherever relevant, the specialised vocabulary and terminology commonly used in discussions about the topic(s) covered by each question; 2. Use sentence constructions that are grammatically and syntactically correct; 3. Free from spelling mistakes; Formatting 1. Use proper formatting, which may: o include a properly formatted cover page; o respect the answer length/word count set out in the assignment guidelines, if any is prescribed; o present answers in paragraphs with proper spacing and page margins; o include page numbers and appendices, if necessary. 3. Information Sources Credibility Guidelines When tackling the questions in this GBA, it is essential that you support your answers with specific facts garnered from reliable and credible sources that you found by doing research on the internet and elsewhere. In all cases, you must include a specific in-text citation (Author, Year and page # if available) as well a full reference at the end of your report. If one of the GBA questions provides a particular internet source, you must use it. However, if you wish, you may complement it with additional facts from other credible information sources. Again, in all cases, you must include a specific in-text citation (Author, Year, p. # if available) and a full reference at the end of your report. When in doubt about the credibility of an external source, consult your course instructor. As a general rule, remember that a credible external source: Includes Excludes ? Course eTextbook, notes, slides, etc… ? Self-published books and textbooks ? ? Textbooks and eTextbooks from ? popular publishers (Cengage, McGraw Hill, Pearson, etc…) Printed and online editions of ? mainstream newspapers & business magazines (excluding advertisements) ? Academic journals ? Government and Statutory Board ? websites SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) ? Personal and commercial blogs & vlogs Social media postings (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc…) Wikipedia, MindTools, LawTeacher, etc. Advertisements Page 5 of 9 BUS353 (Online) ? Group-based Assignment International Organisation websites SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 6 of 9 BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment SECTION II Case Scenario Merlion Holiday Pte Ltd is a travel agency that focuses on outbound tours to Europe, Australia and the United States of America. With the COVID19 outbreak, its business has ground to a complete halt. Thanks to the quick Wage Support Scheme Government response, Merlion Holiday has been able to keep its core employees, though it had to let go of non-essential staff. Even with this, it could not sustain itself over the long term. Hence the CEO, Mr Jack Chua, had to come with alternative business strategies to save his business. He observed that the local COVID19 infection rates had improved dramatically when compared to that of other countries. While many international borders remained closed, Singapore was opening up and encouraging its residents to patronise the local hospitality industry. The Government has even given out hospitality vouchers to its citizens! Jack saw an opportunity to re-focus his business on inbound tours, not for overseas tourists, but for local Singaporeans and decided to venture into staycation packages. His idea was to partner with local hotels, bus companies, tour guides and places of interest to run local tours complete with hotel stays, meals, entertainment and visits to places of interest. These other businesses are also desperate for customers. Merlion would focus on planning, marketing and selling these staycation packages. Jack has formed a full-time project team to work on this new range of products. The team consists of Joseph Teo, Farah Liyana, and Rajesh Ganesan. Currently, Joseph is the company’s Tours Operations Manager, Farah Liyana is the Administration manager and Rajesh is the Sales Manager. As Jack had other businesses to attend to, he decided to put Rajesh in charge of the project. Along with forming the project team, Jack has formulated the following charter: develop viable 3-day staycation packages along with schedule, costing, pricing and marketing plans. The project will formally start on 1 Feb 2021 and include the first staycation package. The project should end with a project review meeting to be conducted anytime within a week of the first staycation. It must take into account all relevant public holidays in Singapore. A total of $8,000 has been set aside for the project. The project team understood the seriousness of their mission. There are 3 major activities to be carried out: Admin & Coordination, Product Development and Marketing. The team discussed among themselves and came out with the collective plan shown in table 1 below. Activity Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Description Prepare Budget Get Approval for Budget Train Service Partners Train Sales Advisors Open for first package bookings Review first product launch Design Staycation Programme Recruit Tour Guide Associates SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Duration (days) 3 2 2 2 15 1 8 20 Allocated Budget 15% 10% Predecessor 1 14 14 16,4 15 2 7 Page 7 of 9 BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment 9 Negotiate with Attraction Operators 28 10 Negotiate with Coach Operators 25 11 Negotiate with Hotels 28 12 Negotiate with F&B Outlets 25 13 Develop Annual Staycation Schedule 5 14 Get Approval for Package Pricing 6 15 Conduct first Staycation 3 16 Produce Marketing Materials 7 20% 17 Update Company Website 5 15% 18 Promote Staycation Packages Online 6 40% Table 1: Activity List for Staycation Product Development Project 7 7 7 7 8,9,10,11,12 13 5 14 14 16 Assume you are Rajesh. Develop a Project Plan and answer the questions that follow. Question 1(a) (i) Appraise the type of project organisation being used in the case study. (ii) Examine why a strong team identity is important among the service partners assigned to participate in a staycation package. (iii) Suggest any two (2) ways this team identity can be developed. The CEO is concerned that a substantial 40% of the budget had been allocated for online marketing. (iv) By performing bottom-up cost estimation, propose to the CEO how online marketing costs can be reduced. Real evidence must be produced to support your answer. (24 marks) Question 1(b) (i) Arrange the activities of Table 1 into the 3 areas of work. (ii) Discuss how you would assign the members of the Project Team to the 3 areas of work; i.e. Admin & Coordination, Staycation Product Development and Marketing. (iii) Draw a 3-level WBS chart with the task owners (i.e. persons-in-charge) clearly indicated. (21 marks) Question 2(a) Using the information in Table 1 and your answer to question 1(b): (i) Create a Project Plan using Microsoft Project software showing the Budgeted Project Cost and the Gantt Chart. The cost table must include information on Total Project Cost and how it is broken down into other activity costs. The Gantt Chart must show the following columns along with a suitable bar chart: Task Name, Duration, Start Date, Finish Date, Predecessors and Resource Names. Just before the project started, the CEO SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 8 of 9 BUS353 (Online) Group-based Assignment spoke to Rajesh, looking grim. Company finances were bad. The first staycation must be conducted over the weekend of 14-16 May. (ii) Evaluate the impact of this requirement on the project schedule in the Gantt Chart that you have prepared. Suggest suitable remedies as necessary. Note: All tables, reports and charts must be shown using Ms Project software. Other formats are not acceptable and will be scored as zero. You are not allowed to attach your mpp file and direct the reader to view the reports in your mpp file. (25 marks) Question 2(b) (i) Identify one (1) risk that could affect each of the following areas of the project: Technical, External, Organisation, Project Management (1 risk per area). (ii) Assess these risks in terms of the impact that they might have on the project. (iii) Formulate a suitable Risk Response for each of these 4 risks. Note: Your Risk Responses must be based on at least three (3) of the following 4 types: Avoid, Retain, Mitigate, Transfer. For example, your answers cannot all be using “Mitigate” or any one or two of the other 3 types. You may present your answer in the form of a table with the following columns: Risk Number, Risk Description, Risk Consequence, Risk Response Type, Risk Response Action. (20 marks) ---- END OF ASSIGNMENT ---- SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES (SUSS) Page 9 of 9 Microsoft Project Guide Compiled by: Dr Yew Ming Hock Version: 1.0 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 1. Performing Basic Operations in MS Project 1.1. Navigating in Microsoft Project Manager The View ribbon offers a significant collection of views of the project, in which the more commonly used groups are Task Views, Resource Views and Tables. Note that Gantt Chart View is the default view in Project 2019. This means whenever you open Project, it opens in Gantt Chart vieW. The following is a guide for changing views: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/basic-tasks-in-project-8fdbf020-a9e1-45e4-bf1523a8d2b6797d#bkmk_changeyourview 1.2. Adding Tasks To enter a task in this view, you can simply enter the task name in the cell under column Task. The following is a guide for adding tasks: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/basic-tasks-in-project-8fdbf020-a9e1-45e4-bf1523a8d2b6797d#bkmk_addtasks 1.3. Specifying Precedence to Link Tasks Tasks in a project are linked to each other as a network. To capture these relationships, the preceding task/s are specified for each task. Specifying predecessors for each task is done in the column Predecessors. The following is a guide for specifying predecessors: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/basic-tasks-in-project-8fdbf020-a9e1-45e4-bf1523a8d2b6797d#bkmk_linktasks 1.4. Creating a Work Breakdown Structure A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a decomposition of project deliverables and work into smaller manageable pieces in a hierarchical manner. These units of work breakdown are referred to commonly as tasks or activities. In MS Project the units of a work breakdown structure is referred to as tasks. MS Project organizes tasks into the following categories of tasks to represent a WBS: 1) Task 2) Milestone task Page 2 of 18 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 3) Summary Task 4) Project Summary Task The following is a guide for creating a WBS in MS Project: https://pmwares.com/creating-work-breakdown-structure-in-ms-project/ To differentiate between these 4 categories of tasks, the tasks are outlined in the Task table. Outlining tasks refers to indenting or outdenting tasks in MS Project. This is done to create a work breakdown structure (WBS). The following is a guide for outlining tasks: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/basic-tasks-in-project-8fdbf020-a9e1-45e4-bf1523a8d2b6797d#bkmk_outlinetasks Unfortunately, even with predecessors specified, MS Project does not display the WBS in the typical hierarchal diagram that we are used to. The nearest way to display that is via 1.5. Printing a Project The various views and reports of a project can be printed in MS Project. The following is a guide for printing a project: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/basic-tasks-in-project-8fdbf020-a9e1-45e4-bf1523a8d2b6797d#bkmk_printyourproject Page 3 of 18 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 2. Configuring Working Days and Times for a Project In MS Project, a default base calendar to schedule work is applied everytime you create a project. Typically this calendar assumes work days and times as Monday through Friday, 8AM to 5PM work week. You can, however, amend this work schedule to something else that better matches your organization's work. If your project has working times that fall outside of the default hours, you can: 1) Adjust the working days and times for the project calendar to meet your needs. 2) Add public holidays to the project calendar 3) Change to a different base calendar (e.g. 24 Hours or Night Shift) 1.1. Adjust the Working Days and Times for the Project Calendar 1) Click Project > Properties > Change Working Time. 2) In the Change Working Time dialogue box that pops up, with the project calendar selected from the For calendar list, Standard (Project Calendar) in this case, click the Work Weeks tab, and then click Details. Page 4 of 18 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 3) Select the day(s) that you want to change the working times for, and then choose whether you want them to be working or nonworking time. 4) If you chose Set day(s) to these specific working times, use the From and To columns to set the working times for the selected days. 5) Click OK to return to the Change Working Time dialog box, and then click OK again. 6) If there is a change in working days or times midway through the project, before clicking Details, give each timeframe a name on the Work Weeks tab, and add Start and Finish dates. Select the first timeframe to set Details, and then repeat the process for the next timeframe. Page 5 of 18 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 2.2. Add Public Holidays to the Project Calendar In the Change Working Time dialogue box, use the Exceptions tab to add holidays to your schedule. In this example, Hari Raya Puasa was added in as a public holiday (nonworking day) for 17 July 2015. 2.3. Change to a Different Base Calendar (e.g. 24 Hours or Night Shift) If there is another base calendar that better suits your project work schedule, you can change this in the Project Information dialog box. Project includes a few different base calendars, by default, and your organization may have additional base calendars that an administrator has added to capture other common schedules. 1) Open up the Project Information dialog box via Project> Project Information. Page 6 of 18 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 1. In the Calendar list, choose the calendar you'd like to use to schedule work, and then click OK. Note that tasks and resources can use their own calendars, in addition to this project calendar. Page 7 of 18 Microsoft Project Manager Guide 3. Project Resources 3.1. Add Resources to a Project In a real project, resources can be a complex matter. Resources can be categorized by ownership level or by types of resources. When resources are categorized by ownership level, they can be either owned at the enterprise level (shared across projects) or owned at the project level (exclusive to the project). In MS Project, resources are organized by ownership level as Enterprise and Nonenterprise (Local) resources, which are effectively also project resources. Enterprise resources are only found in MS Project Server, which is beyond the scope of this course. Hence, resources referred to in this course are assumed to be Non-enterprise (Local) resources. On top of that, MS Project also allows resources to be identified by skill rather than by name, denoted as Generic resources. Resources are required to carry out tasks. Hence, in project management, resources are added (or loaded) onto tasks to link them to the task that deploys them and also to track their usage. In MS Project, 3 types of resources can be added to the tasks: 1) Work resources − People (direct/indirect labor) and equipment to complete the tasks. 2) Cost resources − Financial cost associated with a task. Travel expenses, food expenses, etc. 3) Material resources − Consumables used as project proceeds. For example, paint being used while painting a wall.