International Project Management Final assessment
AIMS OF THE MODULE
International Project Management (MC018) critically investigates how business projects, with the introduction of new business structures and the growth of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are increasingly ‘global’ activities. As a result, the project manager often requires new approaches to dealing with geographically dispersed groups of individuals as well as other resources. One particular interest is the so called ‘Super Projects’ where the both financial scale and the complexity of the human coordination are unprecedented.
With the development of supra-national bodies such as the European Union demanding ever more integrated Small and Medium Enterprise activity and with larger companies through mergers ‘Super Project’ thinking may become vital to the 21st century business world Project Management is a rapidly evolving discipline that spans all business contexts.
Many organisations now employ specialist Project Managers to control projects involving extensive capital expenditure. However, most managers will at some point in their career be required to draw upon their knowledge of Project Management techniques to control schedules, resources, budgets and risks. The aim of this module is to introduce the principles, techniques and practice of Project Management. In doing so, illustrations of its application in several contexts are provided.
INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES
On successful completion of the course students should be able to:
Understand and apply a holistic view of how projects contribute the strategic management and linkages and integration of selecting projects.
Understand the role of a project in an organization and to master the project management tools and techniques and interpersonal skill necessary to orchestrate project from start to finish.
Analyse business problems using project planning and control tools and techniques.
“VR-(Virtual Reality) trained learners were up to four times more focused during training than their e-learning peers and 1.5 times more focused than their classroom peers”.
PwC VR Soft Skills Training Efficacy Study, 2020, VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
Background
In a recent experiment conducted by PwC in 12 US locations, different forms of leadership training were conducted, namely: classroom, e-learning, and v-learn (VR). The results obtained from such experiments gave out some remarkable insights on the value of VR soft skill training as opposed to traditional and e-learning approaches. The lessons learned are fivefold.
“Employees in VR courses can be trained up to four times faster” VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
What trainees learned in the classroom took four times more (2 hours) than VR training (30 minutes).
“VR learners are more confident in applying what they’re taught” VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
Since VR is immersive and provides a safe environment to hone out some skills, it is more likely to build confidence. The statistics in this sense are staggering: 40% more confidence build-up than in the classroom, and 35% better than in an e-learning setting.
“Employees are more emotionally connected to VR content” VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
There is a deeper understanding, stronger connection and stronger memory with VR. People connect, understand, and remember things more deeply when their emotions are involved. The experiment indicates a 3.75 more content connection than in the classroom and 2.3 times than in an e-learning setting.
“VR learners are more focused” VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
Experience tells us that with VR learners tend to be more concentrated than with other media or environments.
“VR learning can be more cost-effective at scale” VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
As a result of lower headset costs (lower than USS 1000 and with studios developing content as well as vendors creating cost-effective software for not VR developers, the cost of in-classroom and VR achieved parity at 375 learners. At higher numbers (3000 participants), VR training ended up being 52% of the cost of in-classroom training.
VR soft skills training study: PwC accessed Feb. 20th 2021
ASSIGNMENT
Your assignment will consist of developing a project plan for a training program. You will be asked to pick out one of two scenarios:
Hotel receptionist training for a worldwide hotel chain
Sales training for a fast-moving consumer goods firm operating with retailers (supermarkets) throughout the country.
Once, you select your area of interest, you will be asked to walk through the following items.
Bear in mind that the firm in point does not have internal competencies in the areas related to pre and post-production of audio-visual content nor of facial recognition let alone AI.
Make sure that you clearly distinguish the actual process of training deployment from that of the project itself in which your firm will deploy a series of in-house and outsourced competencies (pre-production, post-production, editing, software customization, etc.).
On the other hand, critically analyze the academic literature when characterizing different VR and AI methodologies as well as when you analyze service deployment contexts. Make sure to research the market for VR applications and try to be as realistic as possible when you build-up your project budget.
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION INTRODUCTION:
As the previous report indicates, VR can be a compelling tool for training purposes from the standpoint of the
trainee’s emotional involvement as well as from the duration of the actual training itself. All those VR advantages can be relevant in a type of training that encompasses a large number of employees performing a similar task. It will be important that you prepare a Project Scope document stating the rationale for the choices made.
It will be important for you to distinctly identify the training goals for the given organization (research the client organization’s strategies and training goals) and analyze why it would be more convenient to use VR tools for soft-skill training as compared to in-class or e-learning methodologies. Why have you selected such an industry and sector for this type of application.
STRUCTURE AND FORMAT OF THE PROJECT:
This is an individual project.
Project structure (Body of the project) :
Identify the need for a Triple Bottomline objective as applied to the particular case (10 points)—
Produce a Gantt (WBS) for the training program along with a Responsibility Matrix for each one of the departments involved in the project management (15 points).
Produce an AON, diagram as well as a definition of what the critical path would be along with slack (20 points)
Risk: assess the program on the basis of the project you are conducting not the actual roll-out of the application. Use a risk matrix and mitigation plan to summarize your findings (20 points).
Evaluate whether crashing may make sense for the project on the basis of the time and budget considered for the project (20 points).
Make a list of recommendations regarding the overall program on how to best reach the VR training objectives (15 points).
Format of the project:
The project should display a coherent structure: title page should include student name, module name, lecturer name, date and school name followed by contents page, introduction, executive summary, methodology, findings, analysis, conclusions, recommendations, referencing and appendices.
The project should be prepared as a neatly typed Word document (Times New Roman 12 points), with double spacing and page numbering.
Tables or work/data taken from other sources may be included in an appendix.
All projects will be discussed in class in a power point presentation of no more than 20 minutes. The presentation should be a summary of your work.
All sources must be referenced in the text and a full bibliography must be provided (including visited websites) in the Harvard style referencing system. Paraphrasing or direct quotes taken from other sources must be clearly indicated with citations. No footnoting!
Students are reminded that depth, relevance and variety are the crucial elements of quality research. (Wikipedia is not considered to be a relevant source of information; any students referencing Wikipedia will be deducted marks! Alternatively if you find information on Wikipedia use the original sources listed at the bottom of the article)
Students are reminded to use valid and peer-reviewed references to support their work. Websites should only be used if they represent an established source and only for facts and figures. Students should make the most of academic and practitioner books and articles.
Submission should be by the deadline below on Turnitin.com.
All work must conform to University regulations on Cheating, Collusion and Plagiarism’ as described in your program handbook. You are advised to use the Harvard referencing style and avoid plagiarism.
How VR Training Can Help Turn Employees Into Leaders
September 24, 2020
More than your products or your services, the difference that gives your organization your competitive edge is your people. An internal culture that emphasizes leadership training, fosters communication and personal growth, and improves appreciation of the customer experience is key to your success.
Organizations in retail, hospitality, sales training training, and other sectors are increasingly finding that applying virtual reality tools for training helps employees strengthen “soft skills”: managing colleagues’ performances and customer experiences. VR can even boost employees’ well-being, as one European automaker does by offering immersive VR exercises that workers can practice in various workplace scenarios.
VR learning helps employees train more efficiently and effectively than classroom or e-learning methods. And in today’s predominantly remote-work environments, its immersive nature can help offset employees’ unusual challenges of working together when they can’t meet
face-to-face with customers, coworkers, partners, or clients.
Uncovering Issues Early
Organizations use VR to train employees to know their products and services inside out so they can better envision and share promising opportunities.
For Nestlé Purina PetCare’s sales staff, VR opened a window onto the product, taking employees on a 360-degree tour “inside” a pet food factory: an event that could have been expensive to arrange in person. The salespeople got to know their product better through an experience far safer, cost-effective, and focused than a live tour could offer.
Even better, these employees are now comfortable enough with VR that they use it with retail customers to plan in-store product displays. Instead of presenting spreadsheet data, they can now offer 3D in-store experiences that show their customers physical arrangements.
Purina’s training manager believes these innovations will help the company attract technically advanced job candidates.
A Tool for Building Empathy
In the hotel industry, the ability to see the world through customers’ eyes is critical.
Hilton uses VR to vividly re–create the customer experience, building its team members’ empathy for their guests. In a low-pressure, risk-free virtual environment, trainees use VR headsets to experience a positive guest interaction —or a challenging one. “If team members understand what guests are feeling, they will be better equipped to manage guests’ expectations and work to exceed them,” says Blaire Bhojwani, Hilton’s senior director
of learning innovation.
VR also helps trainees extend that empathy to their own coworkers. Team members learn the skills and care that go into such complex in-person tasks as managing a front desk, rapidly setting up multiple room-service trays, and the 60-step process for cleaning every guest room.
https://youtu.be/6KuL3QMgM84 accessed Feb. 19th 2021
Cost-Effective Adoption
Adopting VR may bring your organization short- and long-term economic benefits.
In a recent PwC study, employees who had taken VR training said they felt 40% more confident to act on their training than classroom learners and 35% more confident than e-learners. These VR trainees also felt four times more focused than e-learners—and completed their programs
1.5 times faster.
VR training achieves cost parity with classroom learning at 375 users and with e-learning at 1,950 users, PwC found.
For Hilton, VR has proven to be both efficient, cutting a four-hour class session to 20 minutes, and effective, leading 87% of trainees to change their behaviors. At Purina PetCare, shifting 10 employees a month to VR training saved $100,000 annually on travel and lost productivity.
And while VR is highly effective in providing immersive experiences to train employees for physical work on location, it’s also become an essential tool for high-pressure human interactions—practice for onstage presentations and role-playing for appraisals, interviews,
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