Task details To complete the assessment, you will write 800 words addressing five questions. Key tip: students who excel in this assessment are able to demonstrate an understanding of the project management theory taught in the subject and can connect this to the specific aspects of the case study.

Purpose

The purpose of this assessment is to measure your ability to analyse a case study for project constraints for the project specifics.

Assessment criteria

This assessment will measure your ability to:

Demonstrate understanding of the concept of IT projects

Demonstrate understanding of the theory and interdependencies behind the time quality cost triangle

Demonstrate understanding of the role of project manager and the specific requirements of the case study

Write and reference to an academic standard

Task details

To complete the assessment, you will write 800 words addressing five questions. Key tip: students who excel in this assessment are able to demonstrate an understanding of the project management theory taught in the subject and can connect this to the specific aspects of the case study.

Students can reference the theory covered in the subject as well as the information outlined in the case study description. You do not need to source additional external references. If you choose to do so, please ensure your reference connects specifically to what you are discussing or quoting.

The assessment is due Sunday 26th March at the end of Week 4,  by 11:59 pm (AEST/AEDT).

Case study

Regal College in Sydney, NSW, is a private school providing its pupils with excellent teaching, arts and sports facilities and, academically, is one of the top-ranking schools in Australia. The school has a reputation for top-level university entrance exams; however, due to a global monkeypox outbreak, the school must send its students home and move its teaching online rapidly. The school lacks a proper IT infrastructure and uses Microsoft OneDrive to share content, which is inefficient and costs the school a lot of money and personal hours.

The school’s board of trustees has contracted your company to propose a project to build an IT infrastructure to provide online learning for its 2000 students. This involves setting up servers to help store educational content and providing a platform to deliver education in synchronous and asynchronous modes. The teachers must be able to create assessments and workshop materials on the platform, review submissions and provide students feedback efficiently and effectively.

The students range from year 7 to year 12, with many subjects taught across the school. The board wants to deliver the project within a tight timeline of only six weeks; to initiate it, they need a detailed and persuasive response to a series of questions to get their approval for this project.

Review the case study above and provide a written response to the following.

Provide a short explanation to the board outlining the characteristics of projects and how projects differ from business as usual (5 marks).

Evaluate the time-quality-cost triangle for this project and Explore how adjusting one arm of the triangle (time, quality or cost) would impact the other arms of the triangle and the overall project (15 marks).

Finally, you need to justify to the board that hiring a project manager is crucial for the project’s success. To do this, outline the benefits of having one, the critical skills they could bring to the project and how they might need to adapt their style to the recommended project management approach. Ensure your response is connected with the particular aspects of the case study (10 marks).

Please note: 10 marks will be awarded for your response (writing) quality.

References

Please use APA 7th edition as your referencing style. For more information, see the Academic Referencing Tool of the Library.

The reference list is not included in the word count. In-text citations are included in the word count.

Academic Integrity Statement

You must include the following statement with your assignment:

I agree that I have followed La Trobe University’s policy on Academic Integrity as well as the specific instructions for this assessment/exam. I affirm that this task represents my own work, without the use of any unpermitted aids or resources. I understand that there will be no tolerance for academic dishonesty and that cheating can and will lead to investigation and the application of possible penalties by the Academic Misconduct Committee.

Feedback

Written feedback will be provided within three weeks . Refer to the marking guide for marking and feedback information.

Submission

You can prepare your responses as a simple Word document. The report should clearly demonstrate how you are responding to each of the assessment requirements. You can do this by breaking your report into sections (Question 1, Question 2 etc.).

In keeping with La Trobe University policy, all assignments are to be submitted in Moodle via Turnitin.

To be accepted, your assessment submission must generate a similarity score (you are responsible for checking this). Submitting in Word or PDF format is the best way to do this. If your submission does not generate a similarity score, it cannot be checked for plagiarism and therefore will not be marked.