Applying Theory to Explain the Influence of RDT Factors

Assignment Task

1. I would not overcomplicate the research design if you want to include RDT and Contingency theory you need to do it robustly if not the inclusion of theoretical approaches can undermine your work. I would encourage you to think about how RDT can be applied to this project my understanding of this would be that the plans that you develop depend upon the resources that you can procure linked to the quality and volume of resources as well as customer expectations and resource allocation so think about how you would apply the theory to analyze the case study.

2. Within any case study you will want to use some sort of framework (supported by evidence) to analyse and assess the quality of the PEPs in the organisation. As a starting point you could take a sample of the contents of a typical PEP (established from the literature) and then explore the PEP within the example project for completeness. You could then go onto to analyse how the PEP in some areas has supported / hindered delivery. I think bringing in this type of structured analysis would help with the data collection element of the project

3. Try not to over complicate your methodology – I reread your research philosophy section a couple of times and I am still not sure what you are planning to do – within the MSc in PM we are not looking for you to over complicate the research methods and often the best dissertations have relatively simple research design executed robustly. For example a recent student looked at the quality of schedules and how these impacted on project success. He simply evaluated (developing scores with evidence) some project schedules against a maturity model and then looked at how this score reflected on schedule budget

What would be useful would be to sketch out the argument you plan on making and then think about how you fill in the argument – for example my argument for your project would be something along the lines of:

• Project execution plans contribute to the success of projects (evidence from the literature with potential drawbacks of PEPs to demonstrate critical thinking).
• Overview of the case study to ensure context and link to either contingency or RDT but probably not both.
• Some methodology about data collection and exploration of the case study evaluating the effectiveness (or not) of the PEPs.
• How could enhanced planning have improved the outcomes of the project – specific examples linking back to the literature
• Implications for broader projects.

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