Assignment brief
You have recently been appointed by a large investor in the UK who is seeking to develop Target stores in the UK but they have concerns over the problems Target US had with their project in Canada (see Appendix 1). Your assignment is to write a report on the prospective Target UK as a project – considering what is likely to go well and what not so well.
Your report should therefore focus on the project management aspects including the key risks e.g. loss of money and overrunning its schedule and not meeting the performance requirements expected from a project of this type.
 
Part A (20%)
This involves the preparation of a PowerPoint presentation of your business case and project plan as detailed in the assignment brief. You are required to prepare the slides along with associated written presentation notes for submission with Part B. Part A should be included in the beginning of Part B, in a Word/PDF document.
Weighting for task A: 20%.
 
Part B (80%)
Produce a detailed business case and project plan, and any recommendations to the Project Board that you consider appropriate. You may want to use some of the sub-headings below, but that is entirely up to you: this is not a template.
• Literature review
o Provide a short, but critical view of literature around project initiation and planning, paying particular attention to the differences between different approaches and how those are relevant to your context. Provide justification for choosing one approach over the other
• Introduction to your case
o Identify the major planning problems with the Target Canada project and suggest how project management techniques might have helped to mitigate these problems
• Project objectives
• Performance Measurement / Management of quality
• Stakeholder analysis
• Activities to be carried out and scheduling including any milestones: your project plan must include a schedule created with Microsoft Project (MSP) or equivalent.
• Resources to be used including project budget
• Constraints and Risks
• Communications to be used
• Possible success/ failure factors for this project
• Considerations concerning future operations
• Include a bibliography of your sources.
You must reference your report with a range of practitioner and academic publications (Include at least 10 references. References will not be included in the word count).
Weighting for task B: 80%. Please note that you are being assessed on your understanding of Project Management and not the discovery of the ‘correct answer’.
 
Marking scheme
Criteria Marks
Use of theory 30
Examples 30
Quality of argument 10
Reference to course ideas 10
Citation and References 10
Conclusions 10

Further marking guidance
You will also need to take the following into account when completing your assignment:
• Quality of executive summary (does it give a brief complete summary of your paper for an executive to read?)
• Allocation of credit and sources used (have I included references and citations to the material I have used?)
• Clarity of argument and integration of different components of the report
• Overall report presentation including spelling and grammar
• Word processed (letter size 12, times new roman, 1.5 space), fully referenced (Harvard Referencing System)
Please remember that marks for the assignment will also be awarded in relation to presentation and structure, and aspects such as use of examples, figures, tables, illustrations and statistics that indicate wider/independent reading.