BUS 528/ 520 Project Management/ Organization Behavior - Final Group Project

California University of Management and Technology (CALMAT) MBA

BUS 528 Project Management

BUS 520 Organization Behavior

Final Group Project

Prepared by Pei Jung Chiang (Cherri), Jianqiang Huang (Jenny) and Edmond Low

BUS528/ 520_Project Management_Organization Behavior_Project_presentation_2010_jce_rev_16

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BUS 550 Finance - Final Group Project

California University of Management and Technology (CALMAT) MBA
BUS550 Finance

Final Group Project -
Analyze the exchange rate risk of India Rupee and the risk vis-à-vis the U.S.

Prepared by Daywen Li, Stephanie Yuan and me

BUS 550 -_finance_final_project_group_1_rev_5

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BUS 552 Financial Accounting Final Assessment

California University of Management and Technology (CALMAT) MBA

BUS552 Financial Accounting

Presentation Topic - Financial Statement Analysis using ROE Model.

Also uploaded at youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOSrHCIjc_Y

BUS 528 Week 10 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 11 ideas- Communication

Those days, sending smoke signal used to be the form of communication for native.

These days, communication is so critical as it is one of the top reason of project failure. We do not want to send our project to smoke for sure.

Therefore, effective communication is the vital tool for project managers. Project managers need to ensure two way close loop communication and ensure the message is clear and direct to the audience. They also need to listen to the team and engage with the stakeholders.

Project checklist is essential tool to define the objective, responsibility, task assignment and the status of the task or activity. It provides better control for the project manager.


Meeting is an important forum to engage the team together. Meeting schedule and meeting minutes are critical to pull the team together and to ensure the team member deliver according to the action item as per discussion during the meeting.

Defining the meeting outcome & stakeholders is important before calling for a meeting. This can help to avoid wasting team member's time and resources.

Project Manager are suppose to prepare the Meeting agenda that will serve as a guideline to achieve the meeting objective and on time meeting schedule.

Recording or documenting the project process, procedure, design and others changes are critical to keep information accurate and up to date. We do not want to waste time & resources in using out dated information. Translate to waste of $. Therefore, pay attention on documentation and change management.
Another valuable form of communication is Project monitoring system or Dashboard. It will help to provide the health of the project and picture tells it all. Stakeholders can refer to the Dashboard and react to it. This reporting can help to improve performance and also the project deliverable.

The following communication tool is important - Issue Tracker. It will be great if the project manager can emphasize the power of this tool to track the issues and lesson learn. This knowledge library will help to record the issues or problems encounter. Team member will respond to this tool on the action taken and also to share the solution.


Again, i would like to stress the importance of Closed-loop Communication that serves as a control system with an active feedback loop. This method is highly recommended to all project manager.

BUS 528 Week 10 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1

Chapter 10 ideas- Building a High Performance Project Team

Synergy - is the only word that i can describe about this Chapter that will help to cultivate a high competent & performance team.

What is Synergy?

- defined as two or more agents working together to produce a result not obtainable by any of the agents independently.

For example:

Adam alone is too short to reach an apple on a tree and Bob is too short as well. But if Bob sits on the shoulders of Adam or vice versa, they will be tall enough to reach the apple. Therefore, their synergy (teamwork) enable them to pluck the apple.

Another example:

If you assign Mick to draw a house by providing him a pen and a paper. Below may likely be the result.

House drawing by Mick with a pen and paper

If you assign Mick to draw a ' dream house'. This time :

• you provide him not only a piece of paper and pen, but also colouring tools, ruler, eraser and etc.
• You also send Mick to Autocad Training.
• You create a team of expert (teammates) to help Mick by providing idea of adding swimming pool, draw in 3D, big houses with windows, staircases, big garden etc.
• At the same time, the team will support and guide Mick from behind by motivating and encouraging him.
• Below drawing may likely be the results of the synergy.

House drawn by Mick with provision of tools/ resources/ team support

Performance Synergy is the effective use of material and human resources to make great things happen to meet the mission, vision, goals and values of the team and organization.

It require everything and everyone to be in “sync” - The right people, the right corporate culture/ idea and the right skill set/ framework as illustrated below.

Some interesting fact about synergy - by Lao Tzu. He was one of the greatest philosopher of China, or of the world.
He emphasizes the teaching of Synergy that incorporate with the human and nature elements.

One of his teaching example:
4 continuous steps of Life-Business Synergy:

1. Discover your higher self, mission and passion
2. Define your vision and goals
3. Design your wheel of life or business model or framework.
4. Make a difference, do what you love and satisfy doing, keep going and learning.

BUS 520 Week 7 Reflection: Strengthen Others 2

Scenario 2: Now think of a time when you felt powerless, weak, and insignificant as a result of something a leader said or did. What specifically did he or she do?

Tough one... Most of the time, i will feel uncomfortable with bad leadership personnel or leader with bad personality. Lost respect to these type of personnel that does not have the courtesy of greeting 'hello' or offerring a 'smile' when passing by or meet up or fail to say 'thank you,' or other little things that mean so much.
A leader that behave rudely and aggressively yelling at people also demotivate and weaken the sub-ordinates and setting bad examples.
A leader that practices double standard putting themselves first then secondly only the sub-ordinates.
And usually, these bad leaders are easily forgetten as they are not something that i will remember for life. There's more role models of leader with positive attitudes that i can learn from than these bad leaders.

BUS 520 Week 7 Reflection: Strengthen Others 1

Scenario 1: Think of a time when, as a direct result of something a leader said or did, you felt personally powerful and capable. Write down the actions the leader took that contributed to your feeling powerful, strong, capable, and effective - the master of your own experience. Be as specific as you can.

....Once upon a time, during my high school time - like others youngster, we are kind of playful and have no direction and academic might not be very important.
Until one fine day, my school principal Mr. Phua Seng Tiong who is also my class English Literature teacher initiate a phrase/ motto for all the students/ teachers that create a great impact in my life till today -

" Make the positive difference"

I may not be a high achiever but i certainly make the positive difference out of my life for each decision i made. Staying positive helps to strengthen my personality and also my mindset.

I'm able to eliminate as much negative effect (laziness, indecisize, uncertainty) as possible and stay focus on positive things.

A positive attitude will reflect to other people and make them see things in a better and brighter ways.

I also want to make a positive difference in as many lives as I can and anyway I can. It is as simple as a smile and the smile is meaningful to people. And when people have great time and feel good with the smile, they will eventually smile back to you and be there for you.

This is what drive me in accomplishing goals after goals, I will continue to strive and make the positive difference.

BUS 528 Week 8 Assignment A-3

Assignment A-3
Chapter 9 ideas- Balancing the Project.

Balancing a project means comparison of efficiency vs productivity.

(Input) Efficiency vs Productivity (Output)

Amount of effort vs How much / how often

Learning how to manage both efficiency and productivity, and the difference between them, will help to define the success of your project.

Efficiency
Projects rely upon efficiency models to calculate areas in which costs can be reduce and improve production/ resources/ skills. Efficiency is only a guide, however, and needs to be considered alongside another system of calculating processes.

Productivity
Productivity also calculates how resources are controlled and converted into useful end product or results, but in this model allow concentration of the details of the quality. It will provide an analysis of the relationships between input and output. Productivity will calculate how resources are used in direct relation to the purpose of the company.
In summary, balancing between efficiency and productivity allow us to re-evaluate the project for effective deliverable. You will be able to balance the cost, schedule and quality of the product or end result.

Balancing also requires thought, strategy, innovation and honesty.

BUS 528 Week 8 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 8 ideas- The Dynamics of Accurate Estimating

When estimating, it is important that our estimation be as accurate as possible. However, no matter how well we can make the estimate, there is always some uncertainty.
There's alot of method thought to improve estimating technique.

One of the biggest factor to improve estimation accuracy is 'Time' (see below chart). Time (experience) helps to buy a more detailed and accurate estimation.

Time allows you to gather more data/ informations. Using data and lessons learned from previous projects is certainly a good place to start. Therefore, Analogy or Paramedtric (re-use) method is beneficial to consider the similarities between a previous projects and the new project being estimated. This provides opportunity to study the feasibility of reusing existing set up from a similar

project.

This form of re-use makes cost estimation & project time line estimation much easier and precision in accuracy.

Gathering more data/ informations for better accuracy of estimation not only required time as stated above. The following human factor is very important to bring the whole team to provide a near to perfect estimation of accuracy in a project that is 'Communication'.

Communication is the most effective tool, key to the success of the project and to delivering on all aspects of a project with the common end goals of hitting the bull eyes precise accuracy of estimation.

BUS 528 Week 8 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1
Chapter 7 ideas- Realistic Scheduling.

We learnt about Gantt chart and CPM (Critical Path Method) during last semester in the class of BUS600 - Foundation of Business Management and you can take a look at the CPM and Gantt Chart example posted in the following link:
http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/2010/04/bus-600-week-8-assignment-1.html

In my opinion, to ensure a project success with a realistic scheduling, we need 'Status Checklist' to capture not only all the details that we identify in WBS but also:

1. Responsible by who?
2. the status/ progress (with colour coding - Done (green), yellow (in process) and red (problem)
3. ECD - expected commit date
4. Comments

Refer below example:

With the checklist for each phases of the project, you can then chart the project schedule summary using the Gantt method as shown below:

You can also identify the 'Critical Path' and also layout out the 'Action Plan' to meet the schedule plan.

A great schedule plan can bring multiple benefits to the project/ company:

• Effective process change
• Reduce cost/ inventory
• Shorten cycle time
• Increased efficiency
• Labor resources leveling
• Accurate delivery date - satisfy & happy customer
• Real time information (status update)