BUSI48957 Consultancy Experience Project (CEP) Assessment Element 3: Individual Reflective Report

BUSI48957 Consultancy Experience Project (CEP )

Assessment Element 3: Individual Reflective Report

This assessment tests learning outcomes c), d), g), h), and m).

Submission date: see the assessment section of the MLR

This assignment is an opportunity for you to reflect on the practical application of the knowledge gained during the consultancy project process. It will also prompt you to reflect on project management, teamwork, online collaboration and leadership, the processes by which the goals of the project were achieved, and future personal development needs you have identified.

You must identify and provide a critical reflection of both the areas in which the project was successful (identifying the key factors which contributed to that success) and the areas which were unsuccessful (identifying key issues and suggesting alternative courses of action which would have improved project delivery). The purpose of the report is to enable you to reflect on the process that was followed during the delivery of the project and to identify key learning points for your future development.

The report will need to be of high quality, utilising the normal referencing and presentation conventions. You will need to support your discussion with documentary evidence of the stages of your project that should be included within your appendix.

Your Task

Produce a 3000-word report reflecting on what you have learned during the management of the Consultancy Experience Project within two key areas:

1) Project Management

Consider the theories, models and approaches that you have been introduced to in this module (and throughout your year of study at NBS) and reflect on their relevance to this project.
These are some suggested areas to consider but you are not limited to these areas only:
If parts of your project were not completed on time was it due to poor time management or inaccurate estimating? Did you find the project went off track? Was this due to a lack of planning or ineffective team working? What role did you and other members play in organising and structuring the work of the team? How well did you manage the geographical distance between the team and the client? What types of communication tools did you use and what were the strengths and weaknesses of each of these? How was it different managing the team and client relationship online to working face to face? Did you create an effective Gantt chart and update this during the project?

2) Team working and leadership

You will have been working in a team with people from a diverse range of cultures who have different personalities and approaches to work. From establishing your team with a set of rules and roles to help set the team up, to beginning work on the project, progressing through the project and then coming to project completion, the roles that team members have played may have shifted.

These are some suggested areas to consider but you are not limited to these areas only:

What did you do to steer your team, motivate others, help ideas generation or encourage harmony within your team? What did you do to establish rapport in an online context? What did you learn about working with a cross-cultural team and what did you learn about how to get the most out of each team member? In addition, if relevant, what did you learn about team working online and what recommendations would you make to others about how to handle remote working? Did particular people take on a leadership role? What leadership styles did they employ?

You will need to utilise concepts from theory in relation to leadership, remote and face to face team working and the impact of culture on business to help frame your discussion.

When reflecting on these two key areas consider both the performance of the team as a whole and you as an individual. During the course of your project you will be holding meetings to review progress, plan work and develop ideas; you need to illustrate this process by including key documents produced within your appendix and refer to these in your discussion. These could include for example: minutes of meetings, project plans, draft research tools developed, snippets from online discussions, communications sent to the team or your client, team rules established and any other artefact that helps illustrate the points you discuss.

After reflecting on these two key areas you then need to consider the lessons that can be learned from this project to help improve your performance for delivery of future projects and to guide your future personal development. These lessons should form the main emphasis of your conclusions. Thinking about the next stage of your career, you then need to draw recommendations in the form of a personal development plan to help take your learning from this module forwards.

Format

This should be in standard business report format including an introduction, the two key sections (which you can feel free to sub-divide using additional headings), conclusions, and recommendations in the form of a personal development plan, a references list and a comprehensive set of appendices. As this will be marked online it would be useful to use hyper-links from and to each appendix you direct us to look at.

Content

When attempting the assignment, you should bear in mind certain issues:

• This is a reflective report, but it is important to demonstrate that you understand the theory or approach that you are examining.
• Within your answer, ensure that you critically reflect using appropriate theory and examples to analyse your experience rather than merely describing it. In doing this, you may wish to refer to alternative approaches that you have found for any problem situation you identify.
• It is fine to use the first person when writing a reflective piece like this. It will be read by your supervisor and the module leader alone, so if you need to identify group members by name, this will be kept confidential.
• Material that is purely descriptive, either of the literature of the theory/approach or the business application of the theory/approach, will not gain high marks, but clarity, focus and attention to detail will.
• Generalised coverage will attract few marks whereas focus and application will attract high marks. You may need to explain why you are focusing on a particular aspect of the project process.
• Remember that this is an individual assignment, although it is fine to discuss issues as a team, the submission must be your own work.
• You will need to include a comprehensive set of appendices, to evidence your on- going work and approaches used to manage the project. These could include email or WhatsApp communications across the team, minutes of meetings, action plans, Gantt charts, draft copies of research tools and anything else that evidences the work you and the team have undertaken or the discussions you have had along the way.
• Academic sources used must be appropriately attributed using the Harvard referencing scheme.

We require an individual version of your work, submitted into the Dropbox.

Weighting: 30%
Word Length: 3,000 words

The cover page, contents page (if appropriate), tables, diagrams, references and appendices are not included in the wordcount.

Word Count for written assignments

Your coursework assignment brief identifies the maximum word count allowed for the main body of text. It also details any elements in the report, typically, tables, diagrams, references and appendices, that are excluded from this word count.

The purpose of the word count is to:

1. Support your writing development by encouraging a focus on clarity and conciseness
2. Provide experience of writing to a specified word limit and which is common practice in professional and research environments
3. Support equity in grading work from different individuals

You are required to include the word count as an accurate statement of the words used on the NBS Coursework Front Cover for all your coursework. If you are found to
have exceeded the word count in order to gain an unfair advantage, then your tutor can adjust your grade downwards depending on the amount of additional work submitted. The guidelines are as follows:

• If the additional work is up to 500 words long, the overall grade for the piece of work will be reduced by 1 grade point
• If the additional work exceeds 500 words longer, the overall grade for the piece of work will be reduced by 3 grade points
• These penalties will be applied even if the reduced grade is below a pass grade

You are advised to submit work that does not exceed the maximum word count and that demonstrates that you have met all the learning outcomes.