The University of Newcastle
School of Design, Communication and Information Technology
INFT6304 – Project Planning & Management
Group Assignment 1
Worth: 25% of Course Mark
This first assignment is intended to get you communicating and to
help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of you as a whole. You
should exchange contact details and use social media to establish a way
of contacting every member of your group. Make sure that you make an
introduction to your fellow students, appoint a group coordinator,
allocate a time for regular meetings and assign the work to individual
members.
The following assignment is to be done cooperatively by your group
and submitted as a single PDF file to the Blackboard Assessment Folder =
Assignment01 Submit. You will be awarded a group mark for this
assignment that will be moderated by your own contribution to provide
your individual mark for the assignment. The group must submit a Group
Contribution Report at the end of this assignment, showing the
percentage contribution of each member.
Submission: Each group is to submit a single PDF file containing
text and any other material pasted in as images. This means that any
Excel spreadsheets, MS Project tables and an Assessment Item cover sheet
should be combined into ONE single file in your word processor then
converted to PDF. DO NOT submit one copy for each member of the group,
but one for the group as a whole. The PDF file should be named
INFT6304_Assignment01_groupname, where “groupname” is the group name you
have chosen. Only one PDF document is permitted in the submission and
this document should contain answers to all questions unless if the
sub-questions ask for different types of submission (e.g. MS Project and
Excel files, etc.)
Your submission will be checked for possible plagiarism and a
similarity score will be available to you. DO NOT copy the work of other
people, or make use of ANY other sources without declaring these in
your assignment. Note that failure to follow the submission guideline
will attract a heavy penalty on your assignment mark.
1. [25 Marks]
In your team you should conduct an assessment of the following:
a) What are your own individual skills?
b) What do you each want to get out of this course?
c) What are the complementary skills in your group?
e) How are you going to work effectively as a team – explain any
mechanisms or team standards that will you employ to ensure the team
works effectively?
Instructions: Use the spreadsheet in the Assignment 01 folder
(available in .xls formats) to identify the group member's contact
details and how the group will disseminate information, store and track
documents. In addition, the skills of each member towards the team skill
set should be clearly identified.
A separate section should provide a brief report (not more than 4
pages) identifying the aspirations of each member in terms of outcomes
from the course and discuss how these aspirations and skills are
complementary or mismatched to the other group members. Include a
paragraph for each member.
Question 2. [15 Marks]
Find details of two successful and two unsuccessful projects and
briefly review them as indicated in the instructions below. Try to
ensure they are relatively recent, certainly nothing before 2011.
Why does your team feel they were successful or unsuccessful? Look
at the PMBOK areas of project management, at sites such as:
https://www.project-managementprepcast.com/pmbok-knowledge-areas-and-pmi-process-groups
Using reference to the PMBOK knowledge areas, identify the areas of
strength of the successful projects and the areas of weakness in the
unsuccessful projects.
Instructions: Use web search engines to conduct a search for recent
news items concerning projects. Produce a report that identifies four
projects (2 successful and 2 unsuccessful). The report for each project
should be approximately one half page to one page for each project. For
each project indicate the purpose and level of success or failure. In
your report for each project discuss the reasons you believe the project
has been successful or unsuccessful. Limit the answers to this question
to 4 pages maximum. Penalty applies if page limitation is exceeded.
3. [25 Marks]
You work for the MakeBelieve company, which expects to earn at least
20 per cent on its investments. You have to choose between two similar
projects. Below is the cash flow information for each project. Your
analysts predict that the inflation rate will be a stable 3 percent over
the next seven years. Which of the two projects would you fund if the
decision is based only on financial information? Why? (Hint: to answers
this question, you should compute the NPV, ROI & PayBack analysis
for each project)
Project Omega Project Alpha
year Inflow Outflow Netflow year Inflow Outflow Netflow
Y0 0 $220 000 –220 000 Y0 0 $300 000 –300 000
Y1 0 150 000 –150 000 Y1 $40 000 100 000 –60 000
Y2 $100 000 0 100 000 Y2 180 000 0 180 000
Y3 200 000 30 000 170 000 Y3 250 000 50 000 200 000
Y4 215 000 0 215 000 Y4 200 000 0 200 000
Y5 205 000 30 000 175 000 Y5 200 000 50 000 150 000
Y6 195 000 0 195 000 Y6 110 000 0 110 000
Y7 120 000 30 000 90 000 Y7 120 000 30 000 90 000
Instructions: Use a spreadsheet to answer this question and then paste the completed spreadsheet into your final document.
4. [20 Marks]
The Custom Bike Company has set up a weighted scoring matrix for
evaluation of potential projects. Below are five projects under
consideration.
a. Using the scoring matrix below, which project would you rate highest? Lowest?
b. If the weight for “Strong Sponsor” is changed from 2.0 to 5.0,
will the project selection change? What are the three highest weighted
project scores with this new weight?
c. Why is it important that the weights mirror critical strategic factors?
Question 5. [15 Marks]
NASA has a contract from Australia Government to produce 10 advanced
satellites to support worldwide connectivity and telephony system for
remote locations in Australia. NASA will develop and produce the ten
units and it has estimated that the R&D costs (one time cost) will
be $15,000,000. Material costs are expected to be $500,000 per
satellite. They have estimated the design and production of the first
satellite will require 100,000 labour hours and an 80 per cent learning
curve is expected. Skilled labour cost is $300 per hour. Desired profit
for all projects is 25 per cent of total costs.
Look at Table A5.1 & A5.2 from your textbook for the learning
curves unit values. Show your calculations for all solutions (if
necessary indicate any assumptions or justifications required for your
answers)
a. How many labour hours should the tenth satellite require? [2 Marks]
b. How many labour hours for the whole project of tenth satellites? [3 Marks]
c. What price should NASA ask for the project to cover all costs and profit? Why? (5 Marks)
d. Near the end of the project UK Government has requested a cost
estimate for four satellites identical to those NASA has already
produced. What price will NASA quote them? Justify the price. (5 Marks)
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