Management Consulting Team Assignment Brief | Cranfield University

Team Assignment Brief

The assessment of this module consists of a team presentation and a summary report addressing the specific company challenge described in the ‘briefing’ document.

The assessment will be marked by the module leader, considering the feedback received from the client, according to the following criteria:

CONTENT

• The team understood well the client’s challenge.
• The team’s consulting project has been designed to provide a clear answer to the client’s

Key Management Question(s).

• The team has carefully reviewed and critically analysed current knowledge on the topic subject of analysis.
• The evidence provided has been obtained through a robust and rigorous research method (literature review, quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods).
• The team has provided a logical rationale for their key points/recommendations.
• The team has ensured that the points/recommendations suggested to the client are clear.
• The team has shown novelty, creativity, and originality in their points/recommendations.

FORMAT

• The writing style is clear, precise, and unambiguous.
• The visuals and graphics used are easy to understand.
• The visuals and graphics illustrate the key ideas well.
• The team’s work has been logically structured.
• The layout is consistent throughout, with a professional look.
• The literature references are accurate and follow a consistent style (e.g., Harvard).

DELIVERY

• The presentation was delivered in a professional manner.
• There was a minimum focus on support notes or cards.
• The presenters were confident and articulate in their delivery.
• The team was able to explain the content of their work with ease.
• The team responded well to the client’s questions.
• The team demonstrated effective time management, completing the presentation within the allocated time frame.

Management Consulting Presentation and Report General Guidelines

Please note: You must include a copy of your Cranfield University Research Ethics System
(CURES) ethical approval in your final report. Your report and presentation will only receive a
final mark with CURES approval.

Formal presentation

Your team should prepare a presentation with a maximum of 10 slides (excluding title, references, and appendix slides). Your presentation should cover the criteria presented above.

The feedback from this presentation can be used in your final report.

Final report

The final report should have a maximum word limit of 5,000 words (excluding your executive summary, references, and appendices from the word limit). The paper should include the following sections.

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary is a summary of the report and should include the following:

• A short description of the problem and the management question the project addressed.
• An overview of the type of data gathered and the analysis performed.
• Key findings (i.e., the insights from your data that are noteworthy and will be used as key evidence of your recommendations)
• Key recommendations

Introduction (following the SCQA structure)

The introduction needs to briefly describe the situation faced by the organisation (the facts) that led to the perceived complication or challenge, the original management question and, if needed, your argument (reasons and evidence) for modifying it including your revised/new question; and the consulting process you have followed with an overview of the method of data gathering and analysis adopted.

Literature Review

The literature review must be succinct, relevant and up-to-date. It needs to synthesise what is already known from academic or practice-based research about the business problem or challenge the organisation is experiencing. The review should move beyond what is available in any individual textbook. You should assess the published literature critically and synthesise existing knowledge – do not simply review papers sequentially. You must select and critically review the most significant and relevant prior work - avoid material that has little or no bearing on your research.

Methods

This section needs to report the type of data you have collected (qualitative, quantitative or both) and how you have gathered and analysed it. This section typically includes:

• A justification of the research strategy and overall method (sequence of activities).
• The sampling strategy and procedure.
• The data collection methodology employed (including any ethical considerations) and its rationale.
• The data analysis techniques used.

Key insights from our data

Present the insights extracted from your data that respond to the question being addressed and have the greatest impact on the narrative or storyline of your work. Make effective and selective use of tables and figures. Do not repeat the information included in tables and figures in the main text. It is generally not good practice to include raw data, which would be more appropriate in an appendix. When reporting your evidence, please consider your learnings from your‘evidence-based management’ module.

Discussion and recommendations

This section aims to interpret the significance of your findings (the expected and the unexpected) in relation to the challenge being examined and to explain how these findings are used to construct the basis of a set of improvement actions—that is, recommendations. The critical difference between a good and an excellent report usually manifests itself in this section. This section must be concise and logically structured. Provide possible explanations for the results you obtained. A discussion section needs to consider the results against the overall aim of the consulting project. It should place your work in context by comparing your data and interpretations with theories or other published knowledge (you may need to go back to the literature to find ideas in relation to your data findings). The best reports will provide an insightful and critical evaluation of the evidence found and develop original arguments in a concise, transparent, coherent, and elegant style that leads to practical and specific recommendations. Research limitations, potential risks, priorities, and phenomena that require further research can be included in this section. An action plan and estimates/simulations of the resources (time, money, people) needed to implement the recommendations are best located in the Appendices.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to any sponsor, expert or friendly reviewer can go here.

References

This must be consistent with an internationally recognised style of referencing (e.g., Harvard
style).

Appendices

You can have as many appendices as necessary, and there is no word count for material in the appendices. Use the appendices to include non-critical results, referring to only the most critical messages in the main text. Include your CURES approval form as an appendix – the project will not be marked without this approval.