Project Management 2022

Instructions for the teamwork and team assignment

AIM
The aim of the teamwork is for the team-members to deepen their knowledge and gain expertise within
one particular field of project management. The idea is to choose and focus on a delimited topic and
analyze it in-depth from a theoretical and empirical perspective.
List of topics:
- Learning in projects
- Agile project management
- International projects
- Stakeholder management
- Risk management
- Skills of a project manager
- Quality management
- The nature of project management during COVID-19
- Communications management
- Project management from the perspective of digitalization and AI
- Sustainability in project management
REGISTRATION
Please start by forming teams of five persons. Use the wiki in this forum for registering
a. the number of your team
b. the topic of your team
c. the names and emails of team-members
The deadline for registration is on the 30th of Sep. Students that are not registered by then will not be able
to complete the course.

WAY OF WORKING
Please carry out the team assignment as a project. Include all participants from the beginning.
a. Decide on the team members/find a team for yourself through “the finding a team” discussion
forum in Moodle
b. Decide on the topic
c. Register the team under “Team registration” in Moodle
d. Have a kick-off meeting where you decide on the scope of the report, timetable, quality issues and
the responsibilities of the team members. Summarize the meeting into a file as a teamwork plan
and submit the file in pdf with the name “Teamwork plan_Team number” in Moodle.
e. Start writing the theoretical part of the report
f. Carry out the interview/interviews
g. Analyze the empirical findings
h. Compare theory/empirical findings
i. Formulate conclusions
j. Follow up and control the work
k. Communicate
l. Submit the assignment on time as a pdf file and name the file as “Team number_Topic”.
STRUCTURE OF ASSIGNMENT
Please structure the main body of assignment as follows, max. 13 pages:

• Introduction: Set the stage for the report, capture the interest of readers, motivate your choice
of focus, and map the paper. (about 1 page)
• Description of teamwork: short introduction of company, description of the methodology.
(about 1 page)
• Project analysis: discussing on the nature of the project (a combination of the ory and practice),
and then identifying two most challenging issues of the project. (about 3 pages)
• Literature review related to the chosen topic and two challenges. (about 3 pages)
• Solution(s) to the two challenges: a combination of theory and practice (about 3 pages)
• Feedback interaction* (Alternative section. About 1 page)
• Conclusion: summarising the findings, and reflecting the performance of teamwork, i.e. how the
teamwork is executed according to the teamwork plan. (about 2 pages)

WRITING GUIDLINES
Use at least 20 academic references! The assignment should be written in accordance with the
writing guidelines of University of Vaasa:
https://uva.libguides.com/writingguidelines/general

THE EMPIRICAL STUDY

Each team is itself responsible for finding one specific project from a real company that they will
analyze in the empirical part of the assignment. Please contact the company at an early stage so that
you make sure you have the empirical case ready before starting to write the theoretical part. You
need to interview at least one project manager or someone with the knowledge about the project of
the company that you will analyze. You will need to identify two most challenging issues of the project
and then provide your solution(s) to the challenges based on the theory and learnings from the course.
It is recommended to share your solution(s) to the case company, request feedback to the solution(s),
and integrate such interaction into the team assignment for receiving bonus points (max. 5p). It is also
recommended to record the interview(s) in order to be able to capture everything that was said. Please
note that consent from the interviewee(s) is required before recording the interview(s) and any
business secret should not be disclosed in the assignment.
EVALUATION OF ASSIGNMENT
The maximum amount of points for the team assignment is 40 (40% of the course) + 5 bonus points.
These points are divided as follows:

• Introduction 3p
• Description of teamwork 3p
• Project analysis 8p
• Literature review 8p
• Solution(s) to the two challenges 8p
• Feedback interaction* (bonus max. 5p*)
• Conclusion 6p
• Completeness, academic style, and language 3p
• Teamwork plan 1p
Of the team assignment 20 points are required to pass the course. 3 points will be reduced for each 24
hours of delay, starting from a delay of one minute! Each team will get some written feed-back on their
report from the teacher after the evaluation has been done.

GENERAL
Free-riders will not be accepted. Every team member must contribute to the assignment in accordance
with the teamwork plan. Any free-riding behavior in a team should be reported to the course
coordinator ASAP by email. The free-riding behavior will be assessed based on the responsibilities
defined in teamwork plan.
The evaluation is only on team performance. No individual evaluation on each team member is
provided.