Week 12- Project Management

Explain the triple constraint and its importance in project management.

The three primary variables in any project includes time, cost and scope. These three variables are independent and all projects are limited in some way by these constraints. The Project Management Institute calls the framework for evaluating these competing demands the triple constraint. 

Describe the two primary diagrams most frequently used in project planning

The two primary diagrams used in project planning includes:

PERT chart - A graphical network model that depicts a project's tasks and the relationships between those tasks. PERT charts define dependency between project tasks before those tasks are scheduled.



Gantt chart - a simple bar chart that depicts project tasks against a calender. A Gantt chart works well for representing the project schedule. It also shows actual progress of tasks against the planned duration.




Identify the three primary areas a project manager must focus on managing to ensure success

Managing People: Resolving conflicts within the team and balancing needs of the project with the personal and professional needs of the team are two challenges facing project managers. Many times, the people management side of project management makes the difference in pulling off a successful project. Project managers not only need to 'manage' the stakeholders and the project, they need to manage the development team. 

Managing Change: Dynamic organisational change is inevitable and an organisation must effectively manage change as it evolves. With the numerous challenges and complexities that organisation's face in today's rapidly changing environment, effective change management thus becomes a critical core competency. 

Managing Communications: It is extremely helpful is a project manager plans what and how he or she will communicate as a formal part of the project management plan. A project manager distributes timely. accurate and meaningful information regarding project objectives that involve time, cost, scope, quality and status of each. The use of these aid in communicating information to the team about the project's status. 

Outline 2 reasons why projects fail and two reasons why projects suceed.

Projects Fail:

- Not understanding project planning

- Lack of organisational skills

Project Succeeds:

- Managing projects

- Good and effective use of communication

Week 10- CRM & BI

What is your understanding of CRM? Customer Relationship Management (CRM) involves managing all aspects of a customer's relationship with an organisation to increase customer loyalty and retention as well as an organisation's profitability. 

Compare operational and analytical customer relationship management.

Operational CRM supports traditional transactional processing for day-to-day front-office operations or systems that deal directly with the customers.Analytical CRM supports back-office operations and strategic analysis that includes all systems that do not deal directly with the customers. 

Describe and differentiate the CRM technologies used by marketing departments and sales departments

Marketing departments are able to transform to a new way of using business by using CRM technologies that allow them to gather and analyse customer information to deploy successful marketing campaigns. The three primary operational CRM technologies a marketing department can implement to increase customer satisfaction are:

List Generators - compile customer information from a variety of sources and segment the information for different marketing campaigns.

Campaign Management Systems - guide users through marketing campaigns performing such tasks as campaign definition, planning, scheduling, segmentation and success analysis.  

Cross-Selling - is selling additional products or services to a customer. Up-selling is increasing the value of the sale. 


How could a sales department use operational CRM technologies?

Three primary operational CRM technologies a sales department can implement to increase customer satisfaction are:

1. Sales Management CRM Systems
2. Contact Management CRM Systems 
3. Opportunity Management CRM Systems

Describe business intelligence and its value to businesses

Business Intelligence (BI) - refers to applications and technologies that 

are used to gather, provide access to and analyse data information to support decision-making efforts. 

Explain the problem associated with business intelligence. Describe the solution to this business problem

The problem: Data Rich, Information Poor.
Companies have a lot of data, however they are not able to benefit from levering this information and turning it into useful data for analytical and strategic decision making. 

The solution: business intelligence.

To improve the quality of business decisions, managers can provide existing staff with BI systems and tools that can assist them in making better, more informed decisions. The result creates an agile intelligent enterprise. 

What are two possible outcomes a company could get from using data mining?

Data mining is the process of analysing data to extract information not offered by the raw data alone. Data mining can also begin at a summary information level (coarse granularity) and progress through increasing levels of detail (drilling down), or the reverse (drilling up). Data mining is the primary tool used to uncover business intelligence in vast amounts of data. 

Two possible outcomes of Data Mining:

1. Customer Analysis: a technique used to divide an information set into mutually exclusive groups such as the members of each group are close together as possible to one another and the different groups are as far apart as possible.
2. Statistical Analysis: performs such functions as information correlations, distributions, calculations and variance analysis. Data-mining tools offer knowledge workers a wide range of powerful statistical capabilities so they can quickly build a variety of statistical models, examine the model's assumptions and validity, and compare and contrast the various models to determine the best one for a particular business issue. 

Week 9- Operations Management and Supply Chain

Define the term operations management

Is the management of systems or processes that convert or transform resources (including human resources) into goods and services.


Operations management is responsible for managing the core processes used to manufacture goods and produce services.




Explain operations management’s role in business

Operations management ranges across the organisation and includes activities such as:

1. Forecasting
2. Capacity Planning
3. Scheduling
4. Managing Inventories
5. Assuring Quality
6. Motivating Employees
7. Deciding where to locate facilities

Describe the correlation between operations management and information technology

Managers can use Information Technology to heavily influence Operations Management decisions including productivity, costs, flexibility, quality and customer satisfaction. One of the greatest benefits of IT on OM is in making operational decisions because OM exerts considerable influences over the degree to which the goals and objectives of the organisation are realised. 

Explain supply chain management and its role in a business

Supply Chain Management (SCM) involves the management of information flows between and among stages in a supply chain to maximise total supply chain effectiveness and profitability. The five basic components of supply chain management are plan, source, make, deliver and return.

List and describe the five components of a typical supply chain

1. Plan - A company must have a plan for managing all the resources that go toward meeting customer demand for products or services.
2. Source - Companies must carefully choose reliable suppliers that will deliver goods and services required for making products. 

3. Make - This is the step where companies manufacture their products or services. This can include scheduling the activities necessary for production, testing, packaging and preparing for delivery. 

4. Deliver - During this step, companies must be able to receive orders from customers, fulfill the orders via a network of warehouses, pick transportation companies to deliver the products, and implement a billing and invoicing system to facilitate payments.

5. Return - Companies must create a network for receiving defective and excess products and support customers who have problems with delivered products. 

Define the relationship between information technology and the supply chain.


Information Technology's primary role in SCM is creating the integrations or tight process and information linkages between functions within a firm-such as marketing, sales, finance, manufacturing and distribution-and between firms, which allow the smooth, synchronised flow of information and product between customers, suppliers and transportation providers across the chain.
Information technology integrates planning, decision making processes, business operating processes and information sharing for business performance management. 

Effective and efficient supply chain management systems can enable a business organisation to:

• decrease the power of its buyers;
• increase its own supplier power;
• increase switching costs to reduce the threat of substitute products or services;
• create entry barriers thereby reducing the threat of new entrants;
• increase efficiencies while seeking a competitive advantage through cost leadership.