Integrated Team Project IFSM 438 - Authentic Assessment 27 March 2016

27 March 2016
IFSM 438 - Authentic Assessment
Integrated Team Project (ITP) Master
Document
Project Descriptions
This document provides all of the details and instructions for the ITP and TPP assignments for the
IFSM438 class. In the first week of the semester, students should read the material up to the
Introduction to Team Process Course Completion Plan Assignments. In each subsequent week of
the class, each chapter provides the relevant details, requirements and grading criteria for the
semester. By Week 8, the requirements for ITP-7 and TPP-2 will conclude the assignments.
The details for each assignment are the minimum requirements.
Questions about this document or the assignments should be directed to the instructor of the class.
Contents
"Authentic Assessment" Integrated Team Project (ITP).................................................3
Notes on the Integrated Team Project (ITP)..................................................................4
Overview......................................................................................................................................... 4
Team Roles and Interaction............................................................................................................. 5
Team Contribution Assessment and Grading of Team Assignments................................................6
Submission of the Project Deliverables for Grading.......................................................................13
Grading Rubrics............................................................................................................................. 14
General Theme and ITP Project Requirements.............................................................14
Case Scenario – Marley Dental Clinic............................................................................................. 15
Project Documentation Requirements...........................................................................................17
Introduction to Team Process Course Completion Plan Assignments............................21
TPP-1 - Plan and Schedule for Team Process (Team project).......................................21
ITP-1 - Project Charter (Team project)........................................................................27
ITP-2i - Project Work Breakdown Structure with Durations (Individual project).............33
ITP-3 - Project Schedule with Task Dependency Links (Team project)...........................41
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"Authentic Assessment" Integrated Team Project (ITP) IFSM 438 - Authentic Assessment
ITP-4 - Project Resources and Costs (Team project).....................................................46
ITP-5i - Project Risk Assessment (Individual project)...................................................54
ITP-6 - Consolidated Project Management Plan (Team project).....................................59
ITP-7 - Project Execution, Tracking, and Changes (Team project)................................65
TPP-2 - Project Post-Mortem Analysis (Team project).................................................71
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"Authentic Assessment" Integrated Team Project (ITP) IFSM 438 - Authentic Assessment
"Authentic Assessment" Integrated Team Project
(ITP)
This course uses a so-called "authentic assessment" instead of a final exam. The purpose of the
authentic assessment is to assess your learning by doing. That is, you will demonstrate project
management by completing a large team project over the course of the semester, including its
project documentation and (in MS Project) its schedule.
The authentic assessment consists of the Integrated Team Project), which in turn is comprised of
multiple parts or deliverables spread out over the course of the semester in the approximate order
they would be done in a real world project. Critical thinking, creativity and problem solving
techniques will be used as the team goes through the project planning and execution exercises.
The authentic assessment (ITP) in total is worth 65% of the overall course grade
equating to 45% as group effort and 20% as individual effort.
ITP Projects: 65. Total
ITP-1 - Project Charter (Word) (Team project) 5.
ITP-2- WBS w/ Durations (Word or Excel or Microsoft
Project MSP - Project is preferred) (Individual project)
10.
ITP-3 - Project Sched w/ Dependency Links (MSP) (Team
project)
10.
ITP-4 - Project Costs and Resources (MSP) (Team
project)
10.
ITP-5- Project Risk Assessment (Table in Word or Excel)
(Individual project)
10.
ITP-6 - Consolidated Project Plan (Word & Excel & MSP)
(Team project)
10
ITP-7 - Project Execution, Tracking, and Changes (MS
Word and MSP)
10.
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"Authentic Assessment" Integrated Team Project (ITP) IFSM 438 - Authentic Assessment
In addition, there are two team projects (Team Process Course Completion Plan --
TPP-1 and TPP-2) that are not part of the Authentic Assessment (though they are
graded):
Team Process Plan: 9. Total
TPP-1 - Team Process Plan and Schedule (Word & Excel)
(Team project)
5.
TPP-2 - Project Post-Mortem (Word) (Team project) 4.
Because this course uses an authentic assessment, there is no final exam.
Notes on the Integrated Team Project (ITP)
Overview
Business and IT professionals and/or project managers are involved with the development and
management of a variety of small- and large-scale projects. They are also required to prepare
documentation and guidelines associated with these projects.
There will be a semester-long team project (the Integrated Team Project – the ITP) with multiple
individual and group deliverables due weekly throughout the semester to coincide with the topics
covered in the textbook and weekly Conferences. This assessment will reinforce the lessons
learned from the professional IT project management environment and will use the application tools
employed in that environment, such as Microsoft Project and Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and
PowerPoint). Students are expected to apply critical thinking, creativity, and problem-
solving techniques as the team goes through the project planning and execution exercises.
The purpose of the ITP is to give each classmate the opportunity to apply many of the project-
management techniques to a practical project. This includes both the hard skills of project
management (developing project schedules, using MS Project, etc.) and the soft skills of managing
and participating on a project team.
The course-long ITP project is the hands-on, real-world practical application part of the course. The
experience students gain by accomplishing these weekly assignments is experience that often is
directly applied in the student’s professional life.
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Like any good project, our classroom ITP project is too large and too complex for one person (or
even a small team) to do in one week as one assignment. Therefore, the ITP is assigned in smaller,
step-by-step pieces each week of the course. Each piece concentrates on one (or a small number
of) aspect of project management such as project initiation, project task scheduling, risk
management, and so forth. The resulting "output" of each piece is a class deliverable (and is
submitted for grading as an assignment). The process of producing each deliverable involves one
or more team tasks. The weekly assignments and deliverables are numbered ITP-1 through ITP-7.
The entire project builds to the final Consolidated Project Plan that brings all of the assignments
together so that the student is able to “see” and manage the project as a whole, rather than
individual pieces.
Each project deliverable will be specifically assigned, with a due date, in the weekly
CONTENT area of our LEO Classroom. The full set of requirements and specifics plus the
grading rubrics of each weekly ITP assignment are contained within this document. The
Content area only includes a brief discussion of the assignment.
Note that the technical IT work of the project will not be done in this class, only the project
management planning work. For instance, if the project is to develop a Web site, then we will not
be doing any Web development, but will be developing project management tasks, documents and
deliverables to plan the development of a Web site.
It is a good idea to check ahead weekly for the projects and deliverables due in the next few weeks,
in order to get a feel for what lies ahead. There is a project or deliverable due every week, and
some of them are more extensive and difficult than others. It is a good idea to start the projects a
week or two in advance so that there is plenty of time to work with your team on them.
Team Roles and Interaction
Because it will be difficult to form your own teams online with students scattered around the world,
the instructor will assign students to teams. Each team member is responsible to his/her own
team; the degree of the team’s success is dependent on the efforts contributed by ALL team
members.
The instructor will serve in the roles of client/customer, bill-payer, and executive sponsor for the ITP
project. When decisions need to be made by stakeholders, they must be submitted to the
instructor, who will make the final decision. The buck stops here. The teams will need to work with
the client/customer to define and refine the project requirements.
In order to accomplish any IT project, the project team must include a project manager and other
PM-related roles for managing the IT project. The project team must include IT-related roles such
as software developer, system analyst, network engineer, installer, and so forth. Without these
types of roles, no IT project can succeed.
Our ITP assignments include the fictional work of a real project management team to manage the IT
project given in the scenario. For the ITP assignments, team member Joe might be the network
engineer, team member Jabari might be the software specialist, and team member Corinne might
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be the project manager. If there are not enough students on the team, then these fictional roles
may include fictional names to round-out the functional needs of the project team. For example,
your project team might need 12 people to accomplish all of the project effort, but your class team
only includes 5 members. Those other 7 project team members would be fictional functional
members of the project team. And the ITP fictional team roles would not change from week to
week.
The team areas will include a private discussion area and team lockers to facilite
communications and collaboration while working on assignments. UMUC provides
Google+ tools (such as Google Chat and Hang-Out) that may be used for team exchanges.
Other collaboration tools may be used by the team to hold live meetings and discussions.
Please be aware that if a question arises regarding the timeliness or quality of team members’
contributions, the instructor will ask for evidence of the alleged non-contributing team members
participation and contribution.
As is the case with business organizations in the Twenty-First Century, our class is a GLOBAL
environment. We have students all around the world so the team must work with teammates in
other geographic and time zones. Asynchronous communication is one solution, but the team
should work with EACH member to build communication channels that work for ALL team members.
The instructor will silently monitor the LEO Groups and discussions, and may chime in if necessary
to keep the team on track, answer questions specifically directed to the instructor, or help avoid
problems.
Though we hope to keep the teams as stable as possible, students dropping or adding the course
will affect team membership. Students may be re-assigned to different teams if it is necessary to
re-balance the teams in cases such as these; but we will try not to do this as it is very disruptive for
all members of both groups. These, unfortunately, are all too common real-world experiences.
Team Contribution Assessment and Grading of Team
Assignments
Team effort and member contributions are important in this course. There are TWO
METHODS of reviewing and grading contributing and non-contributing team members
provided below. Your instructor should specify which method will be used. If your
instructor has not done this, please contact him/her and ask which method applies to
this class.
The grades for each deliverable will include components based on: (a) the content and quality of
the documents delivered; (b) the format of the documents (where applicable); and (c) individual
contribution to the work of the team deliverable.
In a well-functioning team where everyone contributes adequately, everyone should earn the same
score. However, the team members MAY end up with different total grades for the project
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assignments, since the grade of someone who doesn't contribute substance to the team with the
team’s schedule for the week, for instance, will be lower than the grades of rest of the team.
In other words, the team deliverable will be graded based on content, quality, and format. This will
establish the "team base score". The individual team members' scores will be adjusted up
or down from the team base score, based on each team member’s level of
contribution to the team and to the work on the deliverable .
Method 1. "Creds" and "360 Degree Assessment" of Team
Member Peers
Your instructor may optionally elect to use a "360 Degree Assessment" of team member peers (AKA
"Creds") in which every team member assesses all his or her team member peers' level of
contribution to the team effort. This section explains how Cred assessment works.
It is important that you read this section because it requires action on every team member's part
every week -- action on your part.
As in many computer games, each team member will get 23 "Creds" per deliverable assignment
to allocate among the other team members in any way desired*. The intent is to allocate
more Creds to team members who contribute more to the team, and allocate fewer Creds to
members who contribute less to the team.
For instance, if desired, you may allocate all of your Creds to a single, deserving person who is
chiefly responsible for the work of the team. Or you may allocate a similar number of Creds to each
team member if all contributed similarly [Note 2]. Or you may hand them out to team members in
any way you wish [Note 1], giving more Creds to members who contributed more, and giving
fewer Creds to members who contributed less. You may hand out zero Creds to a team member if
you feel that he or she has not contributed significantly. It's up to each of you [Note 3] how you
wish [Note 1] to allocate the Creds given to you.
Here are some examples:
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"Authentic Assessment" Integrated Team Project (ITP) IFSM 438 - Authentic Assessment
Figure 1 - Creds Examples: How to do it and how NOT to do it
Here is an example spreadsheet that may be helpful to you:
Fill in the yellow cells --> Your
name: Reminder: Don't rate yourself
Assignm
ent: (e.g., ITP-4, etc)
Team Member
Contribu
tion
"Creds"
Earned Comments
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