CST 617 Project Cost And Schedule Control

Master of Business Administration

(Post Graduate Level – All Majors)

SET B

Assessment Guidelines

Geneva Business School learners must complete the tasks given in the assignment brief. You can request assistance from academic affairs team, about understanding structure of the question paper, mark schemes, how to reference – Harvard Style and grade descriptors. You are expected to adhere to policies and guidelines set out by the center i.e. Lincoln University of Business and Management, which includes word/page/slide count and plagiarism/collusion.

Context

You are required to refer to the guidance notes and assignment brief to present an answer that would fall within the required context.

Confidentiality

Learners must seek permission and advice when using organizational / business information that would be considered sensitive or confidential within their assignments. If the organization’s consent is given, and anonymity is a given requirement of the organization, then the learner must respect this.

Assessment Criteria and Mark Sheets

The assignment brief will include the mark scheme along with grade descriptors for you to refer to if needed. The guidance notes before the assignment questions should be used for reference to ensure that you are equipped with the information and formats required. You are requested to obtain necessary advice on assignment context, format and other supporting information to clarify and help understand the requirements.

The assessment criteria and the mark sheets will help you identify how and where the marks have been allocated and allow them to structure their answers accordingly. Please note that you must achieve a minimum of 75% (equal to 4.5 bandwidth out of 6.0) of the total marks to pass this unit.

Word Count

It is mandatory that you adhere to the specified word count given in the assignment brief within a margin of -/+10%. For certain tasks, the assignment brief may specify the page count depending on the task requirement and, although a word count may not always be applicable for these, the page count must be adhered to always. All tables, charts, diagrams, referencing (in-text) will be considered a part of the assignment word count.

If the task requires you to make a presentation, the word count will only be applicable to the notes provided. The assignment questions may also specify the number of slides, in which case you are also required to adhere to this.

Any supporting documents used to reinforce your answer, need to be attached at the end of the report as appendices. Such supplementary material will equip the examiner with the required background knowledge on the information provided within the report. However, these will not be considered for grading nor as part of the word/page count.

All assignments submitted with clear disregard for the stipulated page/word counts may be discounted, and you may have to resubmit your work for assessment pending revision/review of your work.

Release of Grades

GBS endeavors to release your grade points (marks) at the earliest opportunity. Please allow us a minimum of 21 working days from the final date of submission to have your answer papers evaluated by our professional team of evaluators. Students seeking extension, will have their answer scripts evaluated within the period of 30 working days from their final date of submission.

Submission of Answer Script / Assignment

All your activities and examination attempted online, should only be submitted to Google Classroom.Your answer scripts may not be evaluated if submitted to via email. You are requested to maintain a copy of all your assessments for future requirements / reference.

Extension Request:

Under no circumstances, extension will be granted. Extension may only be granted to the student providing valid evidence, supporting their request. To request an extension, please email the controller of examination at ec@gbsge.com , strictly 5 days prior to the final submission date with a valid proof.

Referencing and Professionalism

To ensure that you follow a professional stance always, you must:

• Use the Harvard system of referencing for all citations and references (including in-text). More help on ‘How to reference – Harvard Style’ is available in your study material. If you need more help, please feel free to contact our Student Support Department at studentsupportuae@gbsge.com and we will be more than happy to assist you on ‘How to Reference – Harvard Style’
• Use professional, formal English in presenting your work
• Refrain from writing in a first-person perspective (i.e. ‘I’, ‘We’, ‘Me’, etc. should not be used within the answer).

You should bear in mind that marks are awarded for professional format and presentation, and that considerable marks can be awarded for validity and quality of referencing. Therefore, referencing and professionalism will be assessed in every task.

Plagiarism and Collusion

Plagiarism and collusion will be considered an academic offence and will be dealt with as a serious issue.

Plagiarism can be defined as: the presentation of the work of another author without appropriate referencing and/or attribution (leading to the false assumption that the learner is the originator of the text).

Collusion can be defined as a circumstance in which: two or more learner’s present work with distinct similarities in concept and ideas.

You may use ‘free plagiarism tool’ (available on internet) to assess ‘similarity index’ between your work and work that has been published elsewhere.

Excessive referencing (i.e. where unneeded/irrelevant) will also be considered an academic offence, which will lead to you being penalized in marks awarded for structure and format of your work or, in serious cases, leading to the work of you being discounted as unfit for assessment. Such matters will be decided by the controller of examination along with Program Director.

All your assessments (online activities, assignments, final exam, projects, etc.) are subject to plagiarism check which is generally done by the controller of examination.

Special Note 1: Answer scripts found plagiarized or copied, will be graded ‘0’ and student will have to repeat the examination by paying a penalty of AED 1000/-.

Final Exam - Individual Assignment 100%

QUESTION 1 (30 marks)

Greg is managing a new product development project which is estimate to take 125 hours.

The Plan:

The project consists of five different activities. Each activity is expected to take twenty-five hrs. Further, every activity has five sub-activities that each take 5 hours. Max hires five resources. They will each work on the project parallelly and will be paid $100/ hr. The total estimated project is $12,500. Based on the distribution of work, it is determined that the project can be completed within a week.

Progress Measurement:
Initial Reports · At the end of the week, the resources are asked to submit their recorded timesheets. Total hours reported by all team members is 100hrs.· Based on this information, Max quickly assumes the project is 80% complete. Max then decides that the project will be delayed. Max sends a status report claiming that the project is within budget but not on time.

a) Based on the description so far, would you agree with Max’s assessment of the project? Justify your answer in detail with reasons.

Max now calls each programmer and gathers the following information:

Programmer	Budgeted Time	Actual Time Spent	Invoices Submitted	Percentage of all tasks completed
Nick	25 hours	15 hours	$1500	50%
Oliver	25 hours	25 hours	$2500	65%
Pat	25 hours	10 hours	$300	10%
Quin	25 hours	35 hours	$3500	50%
Ruth	25 hours	15 hours	$1500	80%
Total time and costs incurred		100 hours

Using the data given, calculate the following:

b) Calculate Schedule Variance,

c) Schedule Performance Index

d) Cost Variance,

e) Cost Performance Index

f) Discuss the meaning of each of these indicators and so, the health of the project.

QUESTION 2 (30 marks)

Gary Foods LLC, a 15-year-old fast food company has a production factory. They require meat and produce including fruits and vegetables as raw materials. Procurement is done through local suppliers at each location. Transportation is done by a third-party service provider, who does not value the preservation of perishables. Almost, 35% of the materials are lost due to improper storage, temperature control, etc. There is also a growing concern regarding their delayed deliveries.

Though the customers love the product, the company struggles with timely delivery and improper packing, which does not preserve products for long, with shelf life of only about 6 hrs., if not kept under temperature -controlled conditions. Though the company has over 15 distributors there is no coordination or centralization. The information systems are primitive, and are steadily losing customers to growing competitors. You are appointed as a logistics consultant. Prepare a brief report of min. 1,500 words, putting forward your suggestions with regards to improving the logistics management system.

QUESTION 3 (10 marks)

With reference to the quality system model, the people are at the bottom of the model. Why do you think this is so? Do you agree or disagree with the same? Discuss your answer in min. 500 words.

QUESTION 4 (15 marks)

Refer to the Quality Assurance – Internal Validation – Self Assessment Tool, Section 4, given below.

Based on your organization and your job role, fill up the tool. For each point from 4 a to 4f, briefly justify your answer. Eg. 4a, if you mark strongly agree or agree – give some examples of what metrics /KPIs you use to measure your work. If neutral and below, suggest what you could possible use.