PPMP20009 Leading Lean Projects
Assessment Specification
Group Assessment (40%)
Due Date: 23:55 AEST Week 12, Friday (5 June 2020)
Length: 2500 – 3000 words (excluding references and appendix)
Case study: Morning Dew Company’s lean implementation initiative.
General Assessment Criteria
Incomprehensible submissions. Assessments provide the opportunity for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to achieve the required standard. To do this, assessment responses need to be both clear and easy to understand. If not, the University cannot determine that students have demonstrated their knowledge and skills. Assessments will, therefore, be marked according to the marking criteria (accompanied by the marking rubric). Failing to meet the requirements may result in 0 (zero) marks where relevant.
Do not reproduce statements from PMBOK or PRINCE2 or any other references without proper context.
Example 1:
Leadership is knowledge, skills, and behaviour required to guide, motivate and direct a team to achieve its business goals (copied from page 56 of PMBOK), as this is considered plagiarism, instead you must show how you would apply that statement to your case.
Example 2:
PMBOK version 6 constitutes 10 knowledge areas, 5 process groups and 49 process activities or
PRINCE2 consists of 7 Principles, 7 Themes and 7 Processes.
Produce your answers for the case in question. DO NOT write about the theory or explain what PMBOK, PRINCE2, DMAIC methodology, etc covers. That will not attract any marks. You should demonstrate the application of the best practices not the theory.
Discuss with your lecturer / tutor if you need help.
Word count limit (excluding references and appendix). Your submission should be made using Microsoft WORD documents and submitted as a separate 2,500 - 3,000 words document. Text length beyond the 3000 words limit and less than 2500 words will be penalised by 5% of the total available marks.
Late penalty. Late submissions will attract penalties at 5% for each calendar day or part thereof that it is late of the total available mark for the individual assessment item. This means that, for an assessment worth 40 marks, the mark that you earn is reduced by 2 marks each calendar day that the assessment is late (including part-days and weekends). See s4.58 in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Check with marking criteria. Before submitting your completed assessment, you should check it against the assessment criteria and the marking rubric included in this specification to ensure that you have satisfactorily addressed all the criteria that will be used to mark your assignment.
Academic language. All submissions should be thoroughly proof-read for spelling, typographical or grammatical errors before being submitted. Do not reply on the ‘spell-check’ function in your word processing program. If, for example, ‘affect’ is substituted for ‘effect’, your program may not detect the error.
Academic Integrity
All assignments will be checked for plagiarism (material copied from other students and/or material copied from other sources) using TurnItIn (TII). If you are found to have plagiarised material or if you have used someone else’s words without appropriate referencing, you will be penalised for plagiarism which could result in 0 (zero) marks for the whole assignment. In some circumstances a more severe penalty may be imposed. The link to the University’s Academic Misconduct Procedures is available in the unit profile.
Useful information about academic integrity (avoiding plagiarism) can be found at:
Useful information about academic integrity (avoiding plagiarism) can be found at:
CQ University referencing guides
https://www.cqu.edu.au/student-life/services-and-facilities/referencing/cquniversity-referencing-guides
Submission requirements
Who to submit?
Since this is a GROUP submission,
• One and only one student in the group will be elected to upload and submit the designated documents on behalf of the entire group. You decide which group member will upload.
• Other members shall click the SUBMIT button in your respective Moodle Assessment 2 submission page. The process for submission is as follows:
• Assuming the group has 3 members
• Member #1 uploads the assessment and his signed ‘Title’ page.
• Member #2 and #3 will get a notification that Member 1 has uploaded and submitted.
• Member #2 and #3 must log in to Moodle, review and submit the assessment. This will also confirm acknowledgement of the declaration on the Title page
• Once all three members have submitted, only then the assessment submission is considered COMPLETE.
• Only the group member who submits the assessment will have to sign the ‘Title’ page.
• Else it will STILL be in DRAFT status. Your assessment will not be graded.
What you will see in Moodle?
Once your group detail has been finalised (you need to liaise with you tutor), your respective groups will be created in Moodle. Once created, you are not allowed to change group members (any errors in group formation will result in you having to complete the assessment individually).
In week 12, on your Moodle Assessment 2 submission page, you should see the link for submission.

Figure 1: Correct submission link
However, if your screen appears as below (Figure 2), you should immediately email your lecturer/tutor/ unit coordinator to rectify the problem.

Figure 1: Incorrect submission link (error “Member of more than one group”)
IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY TO CHECK AND NOTIFY US IF YOU HAVE ANY ISSUES WITH THE SUBMISSION LINK FOR ASSESSMENT 2.
No Zipped files. Students must NOT zip the MS Word document or submit it as one single zip/compressed file.
Means of submission. All assignments must be submitted electronically in Moodle. The submission links can be accessed through the Assessment block on the Moodle unit website. Physical copies/Email submissions are not accepted.
Auto-submission. Moodle implements an auto-submission process for those items uploaded and left as drafts before the original deadline. However, any assessments uploaded after the original deadline must be manually submitted by the students.
Please note that auto-submission process does not work for assessments which have extensions. Auto-submission only works where the original deadline of an assessment has not changed. If you are submitting after the deadline (original or extended), you must complete the Moodle submission process. Further details on completing the submission process are available via the ‘Moodle Help for Students’ link in the SUPPORT block of your Moodle pages.
Warning. Having said that, however, you should not completely rely on Moodle’s auto-submission functionality because it has not been proved to be reliable in the past. Each student should make sure they submit their assignment before the deadline by manually clicking on the submission button.
Complete and correct submission. Assignments, once submitted, are FINAL and therefore cannot be modified. Students bear all the onus to ensure that their submissions are correct (correct files in correct format) and complete before submitting to Moodle.
Case study — Morning Dew Company Ltd
Morning Dew Company Ltd is a private company that has grown from small beginnings over the past 20 years to become a major supplier of hair-care products to the hairdressing trade. Its products are well liked by professional hairdressers and the company enjoys a dominant share of the market.
Morning Dew has not, until recently, considered supplying their products to the retail market, but enquiries from a major national retail chain has led to the supply of samples and the testing of Morning Dew shampoos amongst the chain’s customers. The outcome of the trial shows that users prefer Morning Dew shampoo over competing products and discussions have now moved to the possibility of Morning Dew becoming a regular supplier. Morning Dew management is attracted to the idea; it would enable them to expand their production and sales without the need to spend money on marketing, or to invest in setting up a new distribution system.
It is envisaged that products will be shipped in large quantities to the retailer’s regional distribution centres by a third-party transport company. There is, however, one major drawback: Morning Dew outsources the shampoo bottles from a supplier located 250 kilometers away; the distance as well as the dependency on the supplier’s support also worries them. The quotation from the transport company shows cost associated with the transportation of empty bottles to Morning Dew’s plant and the finished products to the retailer’s distribution centres will be quite high. However, there is a local supplier who could supply the bottles at a lower cost, the issue is Morning Dew has never dealt with this company.
Morning Dew Ltd, is a functional organisation with various departments such as finance, information technology, new product development, production, sales and marketing, human capital management, procurement and warehousing. The management is aware that there is spare capacity and also inefficiency in the organization. Morning Dew believes implementing lean principles for its operations will enable them to ramp up their production and meet the increased demands without overextending prior to stabilisation of the new opportunity. The management is also attracted to Agile approach and would like to implement agile best practice to complement lean implementation in their business functions.
Morning Dew currently employs a very basic quality control system for production and delivery. The company understands that to survive and thrive in a personal care product business, they will have to continuously innovate and improve their products and processes. The company has heard of Seven Quality Tools and other best practices used by larger companies and is interested to invest in a ‘Continuous Improvement’ initiatives to improve their quality management to align with and meet the requirements of the proposed lean processes.
The senior management team has decided that they will manage these tasks under a project. To that effect, a team called the ‘THE TIGER TEAM” will be formed. It will be led by a project manager and initially will have 3 to 4 project members. The senior management team realises that there are various leadership styles that may be suitable to guide this initiative.
Your tasks
This assessment item requires you to work in a group (no more than 3 students). You group will be treated as a project management consulting company for this assessment task.
Your company has been engaged as a consultant to assist Morning Dew’s senior management team identify ‘THE TIGER TEAM’ comprising of the project manager and several key team members who will spear head the implementation of lean principles in the company. The senior management team has asked you to provide a REPORT that covers the following:
Questions:
1. In your opinion what leadership style(s) should be adopted by the project manager to help bring about the necessary changes (lean principles and agile practices).
2. Determine and discuss the skills and competencies required by THE TIGER TEAM including the project manager to effectively bring about the changes.
3. Develop a continuous improvement plan (using the best practices taught in this unit) that could be implemented by ‘Morning Dew’ to facilitate and enhance their lean business operations. List your assumptions.
4. Develop a risk management plan including strategies, techniques and a risk register of top five risks, to ensure that problems and issues are identified early and managed effectively.
Important Information
Formatting. The report should be presented in 1.5 line spacing, 12point Times New Roman font. Report section headings and numbering 1.0, 1.1.2 etc. is expected.
Supporting diagrams / figures may be presented in other formats - Excel, PowerPoint slides, PDF documents, as part of the appendix and will not count towards the essay’s word limit. The reference list will also not be included in the word count.
Tables should be placed in the report. It should be labelled correctly (Table 1, Table 2 etc) and shall be included in the word count.
The submission should contain a coherent, but necessarily restricted review of the academic literature on the project management topics in question. The literature review should be integrated into the essay, not a separate section. Do not include an executive summary or an abstract.
This assessment item involves researching your assigned topic to enhance your understanding of lean project management concepts and utilisation of academic literature. Whilst you use the recommended textbooks and lecture materials, you may also refer to relevant peer reviewed, academic journal articles. A reference list (comprising between 5 – 10 references) formatted in the prescribed APA style is compulsory.
Assessment Criteria
Marking Criteria:
Your assignment will be assessed on the extent and quality to which it meets each of the following criteria:
No Attributes (%)
1.0 Introduction 2
2.0 In your opinion what leadership style(s) should be adopted by the project manager to help bring about the necessary changes. 8
3.0 Determine and discuss the skills and competencies that would be required to become a valuable team member of “THE TIGER TEAM (including the PM) 8
4.0 A Continuous Improvement Plan to facilitate and enhance lean business operations of Morning Dew. List your assumptions. (Plan -6marks, Assumptions – 2marks) 8

5.0 A Risk Management Plan including strategies, techniques and a risk register of top five risks, to ensure that problems and issues can be identified early and managed effectively. (Plan – 5marks, Risk Register – 3marks) 8
6.0 Conclusion 2
7.0 Clarity of expression, grammar, spelling and correct APA style referencing 4
Total 40

Reminder:
Assessment Due Date 23:55 hrs AEST Week 12, Friday (5 June 2020)
Type Group Work
Weighting 40%