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)

BUS 528 Week 6 Assignment A-2

Assignment A-2
Chapter 6 ideas- Work Breakdown Structure

The first time that I ever exposed to the word WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) was back during my college days in the early twenty hundreds.

We were taught about WBS in Engineering Management course and we use it in one of our project – 'Development of Multi-functional System in Poultry Farm – iFarm'.

This WBS helps us to breakdown each of the division or segment that we need to deliver and expect in a structure manner. We can also plan the approach/ timeline/ responsibility accordingly.

So, a brief summary of what is iFarm:

• an automated and multi-functional system that will cover the operation and maintenance of a poultry farm which will be controlled by a microcontroller.
• This project is aim to reduce workforce, increase productivity, low budget with advance technology equipment.

Above is the brochure of the iFarm project.

Right now, referring back to the project that I did with the team, I feel regret as we didn’t patent the name iFarm (almost similar to iPhone, iPad, iPod nowadays)…no point complaining...we missed the flight...hahahaha

Anyway, below is just to share part of my early days course work during my college days without much working experience. Special thanks to my old project team mates – Michael and Desmond.

Work Breakdown Structure for the Development of Multi-functional System in Poultry Farm - iFarm

A. Do Project Research

A.1 Identify Needs for Project

A.1.1 Project Objectives

A.1.2 Project Plan

A.2 Outcome Expectations

B. Develop Planning Proposal

B.1 Proposed Scheme Layout

B.1.1 feasibility assessment

B.1.2 mapping

B.2 Phases of Development

B.2.1 Schedule

C. Detailed Design Works

C.1 Software Design

C.1.1 Software architecture overview

C.1.2 Software integration

C.2 Hardware and Circuitry Design

C.2.1 Power supply

C.2.2 Main board

C.3 Interface Design

D. Implementations of Project

D.1 Installation

D.2 Testing and Debugging

D.2.1 UAT process

BUS 528 Week 6 Assignment A-1

Assignment A-1
Chapter 5 ideas- Risk Management

Earlier of the semester, we were ask to comment why Project Management is important and what is our expectation for this course of study.

This assignment on Chapter 5 – Risk Management further meet my expectation that touched on Murphy’s law topic that I mentioned in my first week Assignment blog for this subject BUS 528.
http://lowedmond.blogspot.com/2010/06/bus-528-week-1-assignment.html

Let’s find out who is Murphy and why he have his own law from this link:
http://www.murphys-laws.com/murphy/murphy-true.html

Basically – the main point is “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong”.

These are few of the exposure, tool or knowledge I learn through out the years that very much relates to Risk Management from identifying/ forecasting the issues --> Develop mitigation plan --> Establish contingency --> Close loop risk management

• FMEA – Failure Mode and Effect analysis
• Reliability Analysis
• Fishbone diagrams
• Bowtie diagrams
• 6 sigma

The advantages of managing risk will lead to;

• Good company image and competitiveness
• Improve quality, reliability and safety of a product/process
• Customer satisfaction
• Reduce system development time and cost
• Reduce future failures, capture engineering knowledge
• Preventing problem
• Prosper teamwork and idea exchange between functional team

BUS 550 - Discussion topic: week 5

Determine which variables pose the greatest risk in winery.

After doing some reading about winery industry, the raw material of ‘Grape’ is one of the variable cost that poses the greatest and most risk.
Obtaining the wine grapes is varied by the quality, contractual agreements, unpredictable supply market and the juice yield.
The grape prices can be lower with bulk buying (not to forget to buy the quality and the grape with most juice yield). This translates to lower variable costs that also bring advantage to the company to generate more cash flow by playing around with the price per bottle sell.
The positive cash flow (sustainable growth) brings significant advantage to the company rather than trying to increase the capacity to 100% in short time of period but end up losing money as the company encounter over stock/ supplies with short demand and need to sell the stock in low prices.
Also, maximizing the capacity for 10years of operation is not healthy, a business need to plan for future growth to accommodate 30,000 gallons, 50,000 gallons or more to stay profitable and expansion.
Below is my proposal of the ideal price per bottle - $9.99 (business strategy to catch consumer’s mind) with a little conservative percentage of 50% of variable cost (considering the higher risk of the raw material threats – grapes/ labor cost/ tax and others miscellaneous expenses).
The following proposal expect positive NPV = +$613k and IRR of 22% ( the higher the IRR , the better the returns relative to cost, and the lower the risk).
Besides, the company need to start planning for expansion by year 6 as the capacity will be fully utilized.

http://www.agribusiness-mgmt.wsu.edu/agbusresearch/docs/wine_grapes/xb0997e.pdf

http://www.extension.agecon.vt.edu/pdf/VWBG%20(May%2014,%202009).pdf