Report

PRM701 Project Management Principles Task 1

PRM701

Project Management Principles

Task 1

Semester 1, 2019

Assessment and Submission Details

Marks: 10 % of the Total Assessment for the Course

Due Date Report: Week #5 – Friday @ 5:00PM – Online Submission

Assignments are to be submitted by SafeAssign.

DO NOT SUBMIT THE ASSIGNMENT TO THE

COURSE CO-ORDINATOR OR TUTOR.

The assignment will be marked out of a total of 100 marks. Once marked, ALL assignments will be checked for plagiarism and/or collusion between individuals.

Refer to your Course Outline or the Course Web Site for a copy of the “Student Misconduct, Plagiarism and Collusion” guidelines.

Note: Each student MUST be able to produce a copy of their assignment and this copy MUST be produced within 24 hours of it being requested by the Course Co-ordinator. Failure to produce the second copy of the assignment when requested may result in loss of marks or a fail grade for the assignment.

Requests for an extension to an assignment extension MUST be made prior to the date of submission and requests made on the day of submission or after the submission date will only be considered in exceptional circumstances. Please note because this assignment forms the basis of the next task extensions will not be given without documented medical evidence off inability to work.

Case Study: Australian Tree Corp.

Background: Forestry is an important sector within the Australian economy. The Australian Department of Agriculture estimates the industry generates $23 billion in income and employs over 70,000 individuals. [Source: http://www.agriculture.gov.au/forestry/industries]

You are a consultant working for a company named Australian Tree Corp. (ATC). This company is a large owner of varied forested estates in Western Australia – they grow and sell trees. Their holdings include some 200,000 ha of land and they harvest the tree crop on a cycle of about 10,000 ha per year (or nearly 5 million trees a year!). They grow Australian Pine. They have traditionally just been a grower of trees (planting, maintaining) and outsourced all other elements of the supply chain including logistics (cutting, transport, processing) and manufacturing of a product. An example of some forestry business components and supply chain elements is listed below:

 Source: https://www.responsiblewood.org.au/responsible-wood/chain-of-custody/

Australian Tree Corp. is a three-year-old private company with roots in the American tree farming industry with an interesting past. They used to be a state-owned organization, but the state divested their interest in the sector and now leases the land to ATC. This has brought with it some legacy issues including a contingent of employees who ‘the old-timers’ who are used to antiquated technology, systems and a limited range of operations on the estate. When ATC formed, it was spearheaded by an ambitious CEO named Charlie who saw a lot of potential for the land and a path to modernize the systems to drive growth and revenue, but Charlie was also not that familiar with forestry as a crop and has had a lot of challenges along the way. This has created some discord among employees and a lot of discontent. One of his early initiatives was to strategically stop growing trees on certain land he deemed ‘not productive enough’ leading to some layoffs and other big changes to their supply impacting relationships with downstream consumers and customers. It seems his focus on profit has now created friction internally and with customer relations not to mention political pressures from the state who owns the land and counts on lease revenues to fund public schools.

The company has been profitable since formation and early efforts to adopt better practices have been generally fruitful. This said, given their history, the company has struggled to form its own identity as private company within the region. Their contractors (those that assist with tree operations of planting, cutting and transport) still see them as state-employees and have not taken them as serious employers or reformers to the industry. The supply chain generally sees ATC as being the same wood supply as always within the region making it hard to negotiate new contracts and grow their business in any meaningful way. They would like to initiate a campaign to change their internal and external image. Another issue is product accountability, ATC would also like to have better accountability of how much tree volume is grown vs. how much they are selling (reconcile their estimates vs. actual log volumes) but they currently lack systems and competencies in place. Management thinks having this information could transform their business. They have thought about using drones to monitor growth and harvest operations and want to explore this option in the future.

Charlie really believes the future of this industry has to do with a vertically integrated supply chain where they could control growing the trees on the ground but also the production of structural timber for houses and the production of chipped wood for paper production and fuels for boilers. There have been some struggling forest product companies in the area he thinks may be good candidates for acquisition, but he needs to justify this to the board. Furthermore, ATC has dabbled in the past with owning the equipment to cut down trees and transport them to customers, but they are currently outsourcing that as well. They would like to evaluate these options more thoroughly in the future.

Another group within the company feels strongly that the company should focus on the trees themselves – their genetics and evaluate different species. There has been some emerging conversation that they may be able to increase yields by 20% if develop a breeding program to select only their best trees to plant. There is also another species (Exotic Pine) that looks promising for the region, but they haven’t explored its possibility. The tree managers would like to see these potential projects evaluated for viability.

This year ATC has been struggling to meet company targets after a series of natural disasters hit the region including a drought and associated wildfires, a cyclone and associated wind damage to trees, flooding and associated mortality of young trees and insect attack further killing thousands of trees. This has prompted others on the management team to discuss the need for drastic changes in management strategy and even the development of an R&D team. Ideally, they would like to look into the root causes of these problems (environmental changes) as well as learn more about the tree’s vulnerability to specific natural disasters to better plan and manage the forest.

They are also having to deal with the general public who often doesn’t want a single tree to be cut down especially not near where they live. Some in the group think setting up a stakeholder group may be a good idea to solicit the input from the public. This year looks to be the worst on record for the industry and ATC is now, suddenly, struggling to survive. Realizing the challenges, the company faces Charlie brought on board a new business strategy manager, Stacy, to assist in developing a sustainable business.

Stacy has solicited your team to investigate what potential projects there are and what project might offer the most benefit to Australian Tree Corp. Stacy and Charlie have budgeted $10,000 toward a feasibility study to investigate the projects they have in mind or yet unexplored alternatives.

In your role as a Business Analyst team you have been approached by ATC to complete this work.

You are to work together as a team of three (3) or four (4) to make a group report to do this work on potential projects for Australian Tree Corp. You will form your team in the first week. Please note your tutor can not help you sort through team problems and issues. As part of your assessment you will have to complete individual peer assessments where you can comment on team members contribution to the task.

Reports are to be of your own design but should include the following elements:

1. Group Information

a. Title of your project

b. Team members and student numbers

2. Background

3. Potential projects

4. Chosen project and Business case

5. Strategic alignment of this project

6. Risks, assumptions and constraints

Assignment Requirements and Deliverables

Each member of the team must submit a copy of the report and the peer evaluation matrix (Appendix A of this document and found on Blackboard).

Your submission will be a Microsoft Word document. The peer assessment matrix should be included as a separate document.

Resubmission due to uploading an incorrect file will not ne permitted.

Submission

The completed assignment is to be submitted by SafeAssign on or before the due date.

The assignment will be assessed according to Rubric found on Blackboard. Late submission of the assignment will be penalised according to the USC policy.

Assignment Return and Release of Grades

Assignment grades will be available on the course web site two weeks after week 5 at the latest. An electronic assignment marking sheet will be available.

Where an assignment is undergoing investigation for alleged plagiarism or collusion the grade for the assignment and the assignment will be withheld until the investigation has concluded.

Assignment Guidelines

This assignment will take a few weeks to complete and will require a good understanding of the Project Management material for successful completion. It is imperative that students take heed of the following points in relation to doing this assignment:

1. It would pay to start this assignment early.

2. Ensure that you clearly understand the requirements for the assignment – what has to be done and what are the deliverables.

3. If you do not understand any of the assignment requirements – ASK.

4. Each time you work on any aspect of the assignment reread the assignment requirements to ensure that what is required is clearly understood.

Appendix A: Peer Evaluation Assignment

Self and Peer Assessment
This form is used to assess individual contributions to a group task. Please take this very seriously as it will impact both your own and your team members mark for this assessment task. Please carefully reflect on your own and your team members behaviour associated with each criterion. In line with USC assessment policy, only peer assessment (along with other evidence) will be used for measuring individual contribution to the task.
Course ID:	XXX
Course Name:	XXX
Group ID:	XXX
Group Name:	XXX
Student Name:	XXX
Please make sure you correctly add each team member’s name. If there are more than 5 people in the team please add a column.
Please indicate the extent to which you agree that you and your team members have performed on each of the following criterion on the following scale:
	1. Disagree	2. Somewhat agree	3. Mostly agree	4. Agree	5. Strongly agree
Please rename and submit this file as: CourseID_TaskX_GroupID_SPA.xlsx.
Criterion	Me	Name	Name	Name	Name
They have evidenced knowledge and application of effective group processes
They have effectively used interpersonal skills when engaging with team members
They have recognised and acknowledged the strengths and skills of team members
They have contributed equally to the group task
Comments (if any):

Marking Rubric for PRM701 S1.2019 Task 1

PLO	Criteria	High Distinction	Distinction	Credit	Pass	Fail
PLO1.1: Demonstrate advanced written communication skills	Criteria 1: Organisation and structure of written content (15 marks)	Ideas flow in a highly logical, well-ordered, clear and coherent manner. Clear and articulate transition statements are used to link ideas.	Ideas flow in a logical, well-ordered and clear manner. Transition statements are competently used to link ideas.	Ideas are mostly presented in a logical and well-ordered manner. Transition statements are generally used to link ideas, however could be refined.	Ideas are presented but could be more logically structured. Transition statements to link ideas are limited.	Little if any coherent structure to the document. Lacks transition statements to link ideas.
Postgraduate PLO3.1: Critical and creative thinking:	Criteria 2: Identify and critically analyse pertinent issues in a business context (20 marks)	Evidences an exceptional ability to identify, prioritise, justify and critically analyse highly pertinent issues in a business context.	Evidences strong capacity to identify, justify and critically analyse pertinent issues in a business context.	Evidences sound ability to identify and analyse pertinent issues in a business context.	Evidences adequate capacity to identify analyse issues in a business context.	Demonstrates inadequate capacity to identify analyse issues in a business context.
Postgraduate PLO3.1: Critical and creative thinking:	Criteria 3: Evidence critical thinking to develop and evaluate appropriate solutions to complex business problems. (20 marks)	Grounded in a comprehensive and critical analysis of highly relevant sources of information, evidences very high levels of critical thinking to develop, evaluate and fully justify highly appropriate solutions to business problems.	Grounded in strong analysis of relevant sources of information, evidences high levels of critical thinking to develop, evaluate and strongly justify appropriate solutions to business problems.	Evidences sound levels of critical thinking to develop, evaluate and justify appropriate solutions to business problems.	Adequately evidences a capacity for critical thinking to develop and evaluate appropriate solutions to business problems.	Demonstrates limited capacity to think critically to develop and evaluate solutions to business problems.
PLO1.1: Demonstrate advanced written communication skills	Criteria 4: Capacity to develop and articulate informed arguments. (15 marks)	Demonstrates a balanced and comprehensive knowledge of core concepts evidenced through a rigorous level of analysis. Articulates focused, sustained, well-informed and grounded arguments that provide significant insight into an area of interest.	Demonstrates a balanced and strong knowledge of core concepts characterised by sound analysis. Articulates focused, well-informed and grounded arguments that provide clear insight into an area of interest.	Demonstrates knowledge of core concepts based on sound analysis. Articulates arguments that are well informed and grounded to provide valid insight into an area of interest.	Demonstrates limited knowledge of core concepts based on rudimentary analysis. Arguments could be better articulated and lead to more relevant insights into an area of interest. Arguments are not always well informed or grounded.	Demonstrates little, if any knowledge of the core concepts evidenced by very limited analysis. Arguments are not well articulated, few and not well-informed or grounded and lead to limited insight into an area of interest.
PLO1.1: Demonstrate advanced written communication skills	Criteria 5: Presents highly professional work that is clearly expressed, grammatically correct and free of spelling and/or punctuation errors. Consistently uses highly appropriate discipline-based vocabulary. (10 marks)	Presents work of a professional standard with minimal grammatical, English expression, spelling and punctuation errors. Consistently uses appropriate discipline-based vocabulary.	Presents competent work that is mostly free of grammatical, English expression, spelling and punctuation errors. Uses appropriate discipline-based vocabulary.	Work is adequately presented; however, there are some grammatical, English expression, spelling and punctuation errors. At time uses vocabulary that is not discipline appropriate.	Presents work with grammatical, spelling, punctuation and/or English expression errors that interfere with meaning. Non or inconsistent use of discipline-based vocabulary.	Presents highly professional work that is clearly expressed, grammatically correct and free of spelling and/or punctuation errors. Consistently uses highly appropriate discipline-based vocabulary.
Postgraduate PLO2.1 – Collaboration:	Criteria 6: Equal contribution to the group task (20 marks)	Demonstrates a strong contribution to the completion of the overall group task as evidenced by self and peer assessment, while encouraging others in the team to make an equally strong contribution.	Makes a substantial contribution to the completion of the overall group task as evidenced by self and peer assessment, while not dominating the task.	Contributes effectively to the group task as evidenced by self and peer assessment.	Contributes adequately to the group task as evidenced by self and peer assessment.	Makes an unequal or no contribution to the group task as evidenced by self and peer assessment.

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