MAN3716 Contemporary Issues in Project Management : Research Proposal

Contemporary Issues in Project Management

Assignment:

Before starting this assignment, you should have thoroughly understood the unit material covered in all the relevant modules.

Assignment instructions:

This is an individual activity, but you will use groupwork in the weekly workshops to help develop your individual research projects. For this assignment, you are required to develop a research proposal discussing a viewpoint on a specific contemporary theme, approach or issue in project management that is important.

Possible research outcomes:

1. You might want to understand why things work or don’t work, or collect data on rates of success and draw conclusions on these

2. You may seek to find better PM tools, techniques or methods which would have a better chance of achieving successful project outcomes.

3. You may want to take a strategic, future-oriented stance – for instance how might projects look in the future for organisations to prevail in the face of new challenges and risks.

4. You may critically examine the prevalence of PM tools and techniques, and present arguments for more focus on social integration and communication. This would avoid the necessity for cumbersome infrastructure and processes. This kind of investigation would typically focus on development approaches such as agile, scrum and rapid application.

Secondary Data – Publicly Available Data: 

In this unit, our assignments will not involve the world of ethics applications and approvals – this is used by all universities to ensure that researchers conduct their investigations in a way does not harm others. Instead, we will only use data and information that is publicly available, often called secondary data.In this unit, your activities will therefore not include any surveys, interviews, or questionnaires.MAN3716 Contemporary Issues in Project Management.

The research projects for this unit will therefore be investigative, and use existing knowledge. The research activities will include exploring, organising and collating this data, and then drawing conclusions from that, and typically making suitable recommendations that would be useful to project managers in future.

Examples of publicly available data are:

A. Auditor-General (Aus, WA, or other States)

B. AIPM

C. PMI

D. Academic Journals

E. Company Annual Reports

Given the use of secondary data, a structure for a detailed research proposal could take the following form:

1. Introduction

2. The research problem statement/question

3.Aim and Objectives (Purpose & Research Questions )

4. Literature Review (Sample)

5. Context & Significance of the Research

6. Rationale for the Research

The research proposal, literature review and the final research paper are closely interlinked. The purpose of the proposal is to get students started and to complete the planning and background work – this will provide a planning framework to conduct the actual research and complete the full paper with confidence.Word limits do not include your references (which must be APA 7th compliant).

Submission Information:

1. The written report is to be submitted on Blackboard by a designated team member on behalf of the group.

2. The report must be uploaded using the link for Assignment 1 – Research Proposal on Blackboard under’Assignments’.

3. You cannot email, post or hand copies to your lecturer. Extensions can only be granted before the deadline and in line with ECU policy. Normal work commitments, family commitments and extracurricular activities are not accepted as grounds for granting you an extension of time because you are expected to plan ahead for your assessment due dates.