A project management case study carried out by a group of five members requires that each member write an individual reflective report on the project. What will be the content of this report, as outlined in the steps below?

1. Lesson learnt.

2. Challenges faced working as a group

3. What you would have done new when given the opportunity

Note: The group work was done via zoom 

 

(a) “Project selection is essentially important in beginning the project management”. Briefly describe 
the basic guidelines to undertake the project selection.
(b) Using an application example to discuss the content of project reporting, the normal reporting lines 
and methods.

Earlier this week, we had a group exercise where you asked questions in order to define the requirements for a charity project. Your final is based on the case and those requirements. Some of the objectives were:

• Contact to the right people need help.

• Plan for charity event within the budget

• Prepare logistics • Organize 1-day event to attract more than 100 people.

Assume that you have been hired for this project. Please answer these questions:

• Based on the case and the results of the requirement gathering, list at least 10 main activities for this project in an activity precedence diagram. Make sure that your activities will meet the objectives. When you finish, you will have at least 3 paths (one critical path and at least 2 non-critical paths).

• Provide an activity duration table that includes optimistic, likely, pessimistic, and estimated time (TE). Be sure to include the formula you used to calculate TE. You will have to come up with your own 'likely' duration estimate.

• From that activity duration table, draw a project activity network (using AON) with task durations.

• Provide the path and duration for all paths. Indicate which one is the critical path. • Add forward pass and backward pass to your activity duration table

• How much slack is available in the noncritical paths?

• Name at least 3 potential risks for this project. What can you do to mitigate those risks?

GLOBAL ENGINEERING STRATEGY

CASE STUDY (Write 3,000 words)

Strategic management has been widely used by all enterprises to survive aggressive market competition. The strategic planning process is considered objective, logical, systematic approach for making major decisions in an organization (Breene et al. 2007, Brews et al., 2007). It allows effective decisions to be made under conditions of uncertainty. The strategic management process has three stages: strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation (David, 1998). Strategy plan development is the first step and a vital element that companies should have to withstand fierce market competition and to improve its business performance.

A chemical household cleaning company located in Ghana has tried many different management methods during the last 4 years to improve its business performance.

Most manufacturing companies in the sub-saharan Africa are facing aggressive local, regional and international competition. Strategic management process equips the companies with set of capabilities that allow the companies to survive in such environment. Because of this, Ghanaian companies are forced to adopt strategic planning concepts. This will help set its vision, mission, and build strength. In addition, adopting strategic planning will help in resolving their weaknesses, exploiting opportunities, and avoiding threats. The chemical cleaning household industry is experiencing a very competitive era like many others, thus it is curial to find methods to reduce manufacturing costs, improve quality etc. Alaska Company for Chemical Industries started its operations in January 2018. It is located in the Industrial hub of the capital city of Accra. It specializes in the production of household cleaning chemicals such as dishwashing detergents, bleaching liquid, liquid laundry detergent, floor detergents, shampoo, body wash, and hairstyle gel. Currently, they supply their products to the local market.

The main objective of this strategic planning process is to develop a strategic plan for

the Alaska chemical cleaning household company. An effective strategic planning process

is achieved by developing an External Factor Evaluation Matrix (EFEM) and Internal Factor

Evaluation Matrix (IFEM) followed by a Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat (SWOT) and then finally a Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) (Meredith et al., 2009). For

achieving the project’s objectives, the following methodologies were utilized and can be

summarized as follows; setting the mission and vision of the company, perform external

assessment, conduct Porter competitiveness Model, conduct Political-Economical-Social-

Technological (PESTLE) analysis, develop External Factor Evaluation Matrix (EFE), perform. Internal assessment and develop Threats-Opportunities-Weaknesses-Strengths Matrix (TOWS Matrix) and combine it with GSP. Finally, construct Quantitative Strategic Planning Matrix (QSPM) to evaluate possible strategies. Riston (2008) pointed out the benefits of external and internal analyses which can be summarized as follows;

• Increase managerial awareness of environmental change
• Improve resources allocation decision
• Facilitating risk management
• Acting as an early warning system
• Focusing attention on primary influences on strategic change

Company Information: The status of the company can be summarized as follows; The company has 24 employees, its market share is around 15% with average profit around 15.5%, it ranks 7 out of 20 among local competitors, it does not have strategic plan vision, mission statement, organization structure, or marketing techniques. It relies on labor –intensive manual processes, it does not have R&D activities, a moderate productivity is estimated with traditional inventory control, it has skilled labors with low turnover. The total sales of the company for the four years are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Total sales and profit during the period 2010-2012

                                        2018 (GHC)  2019 (GHC)  2020(GHC)  2021 (GHC)
Sales                                1,891,840     1,920,785      2,040,896    1,906,725
Cost+ Expenses               1,601,443     1,603,856      1,722,517    1,611,183
Net Profit                         290,397        316,929        318,379       295,542
Net profit as % of sales   15.35%         16.5%           15.6%          15.5%