Select a project where you feel you may have enough information to talk about. The project may be in the public, private or third sector; small or large; completed, failed, or ongoing. The project could be one you were personally involved in; or one that you have observed in the media etc. This is not a typical ‘research project’, so sources may be from your selected organization’s website, your knowledge of the project, government and consultancy reports as well as academic journal articles. However, the project should be one that is either on-going or which has been completed recently. Thus looking at historic projects, whilst interesting, is disallowed for this assignment meaning that projects such as The Channel Tunnel, Burj Khalifa, Suez Canal, etc. are not suitable. Government projects often provide rich data due to the need for transparency in reporting.
When analysing your chosen project, it typically makes sense to focus on at least 2 topic areas to allow you to get into a good level of depth. The focus should be on identifying lessons learned that are transferable to other projects.
Project Overview / Introduction
This should be a short introduction that explains the nature of the project, the outcome, and a taste of the analysis undertaken.
Analysis of Issues
Identify at least 2 issues from the project as discussion points. Be sure to differentiate between ‘symptoms’ – what you read about the project – and ‘causes’ – which explains and analyses why these issues occurred.
For each of these issues you should explain:
The nature of issue and then a deep dive into the cause
The impact on the project: what was the result of the issue you identify?
Analysis: use a framework (a theory or idea from the course) to situate your understanding of the issue and to allow you to analyse the fundamentals of what happened
Make improvement recommendations based on this analysis you undertook.
Some tips:
Think about the complexity of your selected project. Why do you think it is (was) complex?
Did the project management tools and concepts deal with these complexities?
At what point where the tools and frameworks not enough to deal with the issues?
What other tools would you suggest (research and explain them clearly – go beyond mentioning them and discuss the actual implementation)?
A short summary that explains how the recommendations that you make could be implemented. What barriers might there be to implementation, and how might they be overcome?
