MURDOCH UNIVERSITY

BSC203 INTRODUCTION TO ICT RESEARCH METHODS

Project Management Portfolio

Due: Session 6
Worth: This submission is worth 20% of your final grade

Submission instructions: You should submit your assignment using the BSC203 LMS site. You can
receive email notification that your assignment has been received. Late submissions will be
penalised at the rate of 5 marks per day late or part thereof unless prior approval for an extension
has been gained.

The main submission should be one document. Any supplementary files should also be carefully
labelled and included in the table of contents. You must keep a copy of the final version of your
submission and be prepared to provide it on request.

Murdoch University treats plagiarism, collusion, theft of other students’ work and other forms of
dishonesty in assessment seriously. For guidelines on honesty in assessment including avoiding
plagiarism see http://our.murdoch.edu.au/Educational-technologies/Academic-integrity/

To Submit:
A report presenting the deliverables from the specified project management activities started in
tutorials (and included on the following pages). The report should include a title page, a table of
contents and the following items:
1. Scope statement – from Tutorial 2 Activity 4 (use provided template) (12 marks)
2. Gantt chart - from Tutorial 3 Activity 3 part 3 (12 marks)
3. Stakeholder matrix - from Tutorial 5 Activity 3 part 2 (8 marks)
4. Key stakeholder analysis - from Tutorial 5 Activity 3 part 3 (8 marks)
5. Tutorial 6 Activity 1 - answers to questions in parts 2-4 (12 marks)
6. Tutorial 6 Activity 2 - the information about 3 quality tools from Question 2 (10 marks)
7. Tutorial 8 Activity 3 - answers to the questions in Steps 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15 and an image of
your tracking Gantt chart at the end of Step 16 and explanation of it (20 marks)
8. Tutorial 9 Activity 3 - Lessons Learned Report (8 marks)

NOTE: Presentation (title page, a table of contents, file labelling etc.) is worth 10 marks

You may also submit supporting files such as Microsoft Project files or PDF files, but they need to be
clearly listed in the table of contents as supplementary material and the file name of each should be
specified there.

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Tutorial 2 – Activity 4
1. Use the Murdoch University library catalogue or the Internet to search for one of the papers
listed below (these are from Tutorial 1). Alternatively, you can develop a project scope
statement for the smartwatch prototype project that you discussed in Tutorial 2, using the Scope
Statement Template from the LMS. Make assumptions about your proposed version of the
project where necessary.

2. Develop a Scope Statement for the project reported in the paper you have chosen, using the
Scope Statement Template from the LMS. Remember to include all the elements that a Scope
Statement should have (you can refer back to the lecture slides). Make educated guesses where
necessary. You should be able to provide answers to these questions in your Scope Statement:
a) What is the project trying to achieve?
b) How would the stakeholders determine they are getting what was asked for?
c) What types of constraints and assumptions can be made about this project?
d) What is the boundary for this project? You may need to think a bit about this – what
could the project have included but did not?

 Sheng, S.; Magnien, B.; Kumaraguru, P.; Acquisti, A.; Cranor, L. F.; Hong, J.; and Nunge, E.
(2007).Anti-Phishing Phil: The design and evaluation of a game that teaches people not to fall
for phish. Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) 2007, July 18-20, 2007,
Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
In this paper we describe the design and evaluation of Anti-Phishing Phil, an online game that
teaches users good habits to help them avoid phishing attacks. We used learning science principles
to design and iteratively refine the game. We evaluated the game through a user study: participants
were tested on their ability to identify fraudulent web sites before and after spending 15 minutes
engaged in one of three anti-phishing training activities (playing the game, reading an anti-phishing
tutorial we created based on the game, or reading existing online training materials). We found that
the participants who played the game were better able to identify fraudulent web sites compared to
the participants in other conditions. We attribute these effects to both the content of the training
messages presented in the game as well as the presentation of these materials in an interactive
game format. Our results confirm that games can be an effective way of educating people about
phishing and other security attacks.

 Puhakainen, P., & Siponen, M. (2010). Improving employees’ compliance through information
systems security training: An action research study. MIS Quarterly, 34(4), 767-A4.
Employee noncompliance with information systems security policies is a key concern for
organizations. If users do not comply with IS security policies, security solutions lose their efficacy. Of
the different IS security policy compliance approaches, training is the most commonly suggested in
the literature. Yet, few of the existing studies about training to promote IS policy compliance utilize
theory to explain what learning principles affect user compliance with IS security policies, or offer
empirical evidence of their practical effectiveness. Consequently, there is a need for IS security
training approaches that are theory-based and empirically evaluated. Accordingly, we propose a
training program based on two theories: the universal constructive instructional theory and the
elaboration likelihood model. We then validate the training program for IS security policy
compliance training through an action research project. The action research intervention suggests
that the theory-based training achieved positive results and was practical to deploy. Moreover, the
intervention suggests that information security training should utilize contents and methods that
activate and motivate the learners to systematic cognitive processing of information they receive

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during the training. In addition, the action research study made clear that a continuous
communication process was also required to improve user IS security policy compliance. The findings
of this study offer new insights for scholars and practitioners involved in IS security policy
compliance

 Kato, S. and Wong, K. W. (2011) Intelligent Automated Guided Vehicle Controller with Reverse
Strategy. Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics 15(3),
304-312.
This paper describes the intelligent Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) control system using Fuzzy
Rule Interpolation (FRI) method. The AGV used in this paper is a virtual vehicle simulated using
computer. The purpose of the control system is to control the simulated AGV by moving along the
given path towards a goal. Some obstacles can be placed on or near the path to increase the
difficulties of the control system. The intelligent AGV should follow the path by avoiding these
obstacles. This system consists of two fuzzy controllers. One is the original FRI controller that mainly
controls the forward movement of the AGV. Another one is the proposed reverse movement
controller that deals with the critical situation. When the original FRI controller faces the critical
situation, our proposed reverse controller will control the AGV to reverse and move forward towards
the goal. Our proposed reverse controller utilizes the advantage of FRI method. In our system, we
also develop a novel switching system to switch from original to the developed reverse controller.

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Tutorial 3 – Activity 3
This activity adds to your Project Management knowledge by looking at how Time is managed. The
tasks accomplished in the Time Management knowledge area assist you in developing a schedule for
a project or a section of a project. In general, you need to work out: what activities need to be done,
and in what sequence; how long will each take, and what resources are needed. The schedule can
then be monitored to make decisions about whether completing on time is feasible. The schedule
can then be developed, and is usually displayed as a Gantt chart. Look at the lecture slides from
Topic 2 to refresh your memory and you can also read more about Gantt charts here
http://www.gantt.com/index.htm

1. Open a copy of the tutorial on Microsoft Project you used in the last tutorial:
 Schwalbe, K (2016) A Brief Guide to Microsoft Project Professional 2016
https://kathyschwalbe.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/project2016guide.pdf

2. Work through the steps described from p16 to p20 so that you are comfortable creating a work
breakdown structure from scratch. Change the date option to Australian format – dd/mm/yyyy
– if it is not already in that format.

3. Continue working through the Tutorial until p33 so that you have experience creating a Gantt
chart. Then Go back and ADD 1 additional meaningful task to each of the phases of your
project. You should now have 5 additional tasks. Don’t forget to add durations for your new
tasks. Ensure that you save a copy of the file at this point as you will be submitting the Gantt
chart as part of your Project Management Portfolio.

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Tutorial 5 – Activity 3
This activity adds to your Project Management knowledge by looking at how project Stakeholders
are identified and managed. The ultimate goal of project management is to meet or exceed
stakeholder needs and expectations for a project, so you must first identify who your particular
project stakeholders are. The table below maps the Project Stakeholder Management knowledge
area against the project management process groups to illustrate activities associated with project
stakeholders.

Project Management Process Groups

Knowledge Initiating Planning Executing Monitoring Closing
Area and
Controlling
Project Identify Plan Manage Control
Stakeholder stakeholders Stakeholder stakeholder stakeholder
Management Management engagement engagement

Two key outputs of this process include:

 Stakeholder register: a document that includes details related to the identified project
stakeholders
 Stakeholder management strategy: an approach to help increase the support from
stakeholders throughout the project; this often includes sensitive information

You will undertake some stakeholder management activities based on the project mentioned in
Activity 2 above, where researchers are planning a research project to trial 3D printing technology
to print and implant living bone cells. The participants in the project would be human patients
with bone cancer, and the research team would include medical specialists, bioengineers and
computer scientists.

The following resources might be of use:

 A Wikipedia article on stakeholder management:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stakeholder_management
 A tutorial on stakeholder analysis: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_07.htm

What you need to do:

1. Identify the project stakeholders

Produce a list of the main project stakeholders (aim for at least 8 stakeholders). Remember that
although stakeholders may be both organisations and people, ultimately you must communicate
with people. Where possible identify the individual stakeholders (people or roles) who affect (or are
affected by) your project. Make assumptions as necessary.

2. Prioritise the stakeholders

Map out the stakeholders you have identified using a matrix like the one below, and classify them by
their power over the project and by their interest in the project. An interactive version is available
from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_07.htm if you would like to use it.

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3. Understand your key stakeholders
You need to know more about your key stakeholders including how they are likely to feel about and
react to your project. Create a key stakeholder analysis in the form of a table that lists each of the
stakeholders in the High Power quadrants and for each of them provides a brief description of the
stakeholder and describes their likely stance toward the project and issues associated with it.

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Tutorial 6

After this session your Project Management Portfolio should include:

1. Answers to questions in parts 2-4 of Activity 1
2. Information about 3 quality tools from Activity 2

Activity 1

This activity continues your work with Microsoft Project. Open the following tutorial on Microsoft
Project (you used it in previous tutorials):
 Schwalbe, K (2016) A Brief Guide to Microsoft Project Professional 2016
https://kathyschwalbe.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/project2016guide.pdf

Gantt chart is the default view in Microsoft Project 2016, but network diagrams (a.k.a. PERT
diagrams) can be used to more clearly show the task dependencies.

1. Read pp 33-36 in A Brief Guide to Microsoft Project Professional 2016 (up to the “Project Cost
and Resource Management” section) for information on network diagrams and critical path
analysis, then read pp 13-15 for further information about reports.

2. Download the file named LiteratureReviewGantt.mpp from the LMS and open it in Microsoft
Project. On the Format tab, click the Critical Tasks checkbox and notice that the critical tasks now
display in red.
a. Explain what a critical path is.
b. Which tasks in this project are NOT on the critical path?
c. How much slack time do these tasks have? What does this mean in terms of project
completion?
3. From the View tab select Tables and then Schedule. This view shows early and latest start and
finish dates as well as slack time. Does this help your understanding of the time available for
each task?

4. In the View tab select Network Diagram and note how the project tasks are represented, and
how the dependencies are shown. How does this view add to your understanding of the
relationships between tasks of the project?

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Activity 2

The lecture introduced some ‘basic tools of quality’. This term is used for graphical techniques
that have been identified as being helpful for troubleshooting issues related to quality:
• Cause–effect diagrams (Ishikawa diagrams)
• Control charts
• Run charts
• Scatter diagrams
• Histograms
• Pareto chart
• Flowcharts.

1. Choose three of these tools and search on the Internet to identify how each can be used to help
in monitoring and controlling a project.

2. Include the following in your portfolio for each of the three tools chosen:
a. A brief description of the tool
b. An explanation of how it can be used in project management
c. A reference list of all sources of information you used to complete this.

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Tutorial 8 - Activity 3
NOTE: The work you do on this question should be included in your Project Management Portfolio.
Your written answers to the questions in Steps 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 15 and 16 should be presented in
your portfolio. You also need an image of your tracking Gantt chart at the end of Step 16, and can
include other images if they help support your answers.

This activity continues your work with Microsoft Project and adds to your project management
knowledge by looking at how change is managed, and the impact different changes have on your
project. You might need to refer to the tutorial on Microsoft Project you used in previous tutorials:
 Schwalbe, K (2016) A Brief Guide to Microsoft Project Professional 2016
https://kathyschwalbe.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/project2016guide.pdf

In addition to being used as a planning tool, Microsoft Project can be used to track progress and
make adjustments to the project schedule. You will use a tracking Gantt chart to help monitor and
control work on the Literature Review submission project.

1. Download the file named LiteratureReviewTrackingGantt.mpp from the LMS and open it in
Microsoft Project. On the Format tab, click the Critical Tasks checkbox to show the critical tasks
in red.

2. On the Project tab, under the Schedule group, click the Set Baseline button and click OK to Set
Baseline for the whole project. This is means that you will be able to track the project
performance against this initial baseline.

3. Make a note of the projected date for submitting the final report.

4. From the Task tab, right-click the Select All button (grey unlabelled square in the top left hand),
and then click Tracking to view the tracking table. You may need to move the split bar to see all
of the duration columns.

5. Enter actual task completion information below for 2 tasks that you have completed:

Task Actual Start Actual Finish

Search Library Databases for relevant material 18/03/16 18/03/16
Search Google Scholar for relevant material 18/03/16 22/03/16

6. It took an additional day to search Google Scholar beyond the original estimated duration. How
does this impact on the tasks that follow? Why?

7. Look at the project finish date. Is the additional day taken to search Google Scholar likely to
influence the submission of the final report? If so, how?

8. Enter actual task completion information below for the next 2 tasks that you have completed:

Task Actual Start Actual Finish

Retrieve papers 23/03/16 29/03/16
Assess the credibility of the each source 23/03/16 25/03/16

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9. It took an additional day to assess the credibility of the sources. How does this impact on the
tasks that follow? Does it influence the projected submission date of the final report? If so, how?

10. The tracking Gantt chart also shows percentage completion information. You start the task ‘Use
evaluation guides to determine if the article is relevant’ on 30/03/16 and are 30% through it.
Enter this information and note how it is displayed on the chart. How far are you estimated to be
through the summary level task ‘Content Evaluation’?

11. Switch to Network Diagram view. How are the completed tasks identified?

You are concerned that you may be slipping behind schedule, so after examining your work
breakdown structure to identify ways you may be able to save time, you decide that you could
probably start work on constructing the concept matrix when you are 75% through the final
evaluation of content.

12. Change back to Gantt chart entry view. If you see tracking information instead of the baseline
information with predecessors shown, right-click the Select All button (grey unlabelled square in
the top left hand), and then click Entry.

13. Double-click on the Task Name for Construct a Concept Matrix of collected Articles, and then
click on the Predecessors tab in the Task Information dialog box. Click in the cell under Task
Name, and select Final evaluation of content. Click the Type drop down arrow for this task to see
the various types of dependencies. For this task the default type, finish-to-start, is used. The Lag
is set to 0d (0 days).

14. A positive Lag means there is a gap between tasks, and negative lag means there is an overlap.
Change the lag to -25% and notice that the Predecessor column for the task displays 13FS-25%,
meaning there is a finish-to-start relationship with the predecessor task (Final evaluation of
content) and a lag of -25%, meaning the task can start when 75% of Final evaluation of content is
completed.

15. Does this earlier start impact on the projected completion of the project?

16. Experiment with ways of bringing the project back on track to submit in time. When you identify
one plausible way you can do this, both explain it and include the tracking Gantt chart that
illustrates it in your Project Management Portfolio.

Tutorial 9 - Activity 3
NOTE: The work you do on this question should be included in your Project Management Portfolio.
This is the last component of the Project Management Portfolio

This activity concludes your Project Management knowledge by looking at how projects are closed.
Throughout each phase, lessons are learned and opportunities for improvement are discovered. In
order to continuously improve the success of projects, documenting the lessons learned helps a
project team to identify the causes of problems that occurred and avoid them in later projects.

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The objective of a Lessons Learned Report is to collect all the relevant information. Look at the
lecture slides from Topic 6 to refresh your memory.

Write a Lessons Learned Report for a project you have worked on. This project could be:
i. An assignment you have done for this unit
ii. An assignment you have done for any other unit
iii. Any project you are able to report on.

Your Lessons Learned Report should include the following sections:

1. Introduction
 Briefly describe the project.
2. Achievement of scope and time constraints
 Discuss whether the project met scope and time constraints. That is, were you able to do
everything that was planned, and finish/submit on time?
3. What went right?
 Describe one example of what went right on this project.
4. What went wrong?
 Describe one example of what went wrong on this project.
5. Lessons learned
 Briefly discuss what the main lessons you learned from this project were. This should
include both in terms of managing the project, and in terms of skills that may be useful to
you in the future.
6. Implications for the Poster Presentation project
 Discuss what you will you do differently on the Poster Presentation project based on your
experiences with this and other projects.

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