WBS projects: supervisor’s guidelines
This paper attempts to include some condensed wisdom, as far as it goes, geared particularly towards increasing academic rigour in practical based projects. A project can do a very useful piece of practical work and I wish to encourage this; there is a danger however of tunnel vision and a dissertation which does not do you justice. This should help to clarify your critical thinking during the project and to write a better dissertation, thus improving the project all round. Not all sections are appropriate for all projects! Note that these guidelines were developed for MBA students, but give a good idea for students of all project types. Use with discretion.
You are expected to make an original contribution to the selected topic area. This does not have to be of PhD standard in originality or new theory, but some element should be clearly your insights, typically in applying the theory some situation. The originality is mainly in the application and the reflection on that application. Your data, its analysis, your arguments and reflections are your contribution. Your contribution should be ‘interesting’, subjective though that is! The primary emphasis should be business and management, rather than technology.
Use standard analysis tools as listed and referenced below, to show you understand the fundamental, critical, sharp end value adding nature of the business or the unit where your project is situated. It may be short, but should give a context for your project contribution to which you can relate at all points. It gives you some good questions for the early days of your project. It helps you to apply your approach to the particular and individual needs of this organisation in this business at this point of time.
- Porter’s 5 forces analysis helps show the competitive nature of the business and identify the names of other organisations within its immediate environment.
- PESTLE model
- Value Chain analysis helps focus on the value adding stages of a business, and any gaps, particularly information-related.
- SWOT analysis is fairly well understood
- Stages of Growth
- Leavitt organisational analysis asks about what will be the effect on people of any changes you propose and therefore how it should be managed.
This does not apply so strongly to internal projects.
A project dissertation is concerned with the process of your work as well as its content. You need to show awareness of how you are going about the project as well as what you have done and achieved. It includes awareness of particular techniques appropriate for particular tasks including the project as a whole, and any methodology course material you have encountered should be fully exploited. You should think about, and show that you have thought about, alternative methods at each stage, and how you select the chosen method. Sometimes the choice is to satisfy highly pragmatic constraints; in this case say so, but you must show the context of an ‘ideal’ choice of methods. You should be able to defend and justify the approach you have taken at all stages. I am willing to critique instruments e.g. questionnaires before you use them.
You must do some kind of analysis and be able to justify your argument to a reasonable degree, and this means identifying evidence of your work which is independent and, in principle, verifiable. This might be survey, interview data collection or other case study analysis. Alternatively it might be principally argumentation from the theory, but the theory must still be applied. Data might be qualitative or quantitative, but its source and the research method by which it is acquired must be clearly shown and justified. What methods will you use to gather the data? What literature will you locate for the theory. Will it be written documents, minutes of meetings, personal recollections, structured interviews? What questions will you ask in order to test the issues you choose to investigate? Will you have tapes or transcripts of the interviews? Is there more ‘objective’ data you could measure to test or verify what people say? Can you check one person’s view against another’s? You might well be heading for both literature analysis and testing of ideas / potential applications and this is normal. You can initiate workshops, agenda items for management teams – consider using this project as an intervention for the organisation and for your own development, but handle with care!
‘Compare and Contrast’ is often a useful overall approach. The challenge is to find another organisation with which you might compare, as well as say your own. Observed differences are particularly thought-provoking. Benchmarking is a possible related emphasis.
You may have to separate at times the practical work from the dissertation. In other words, some of the practical material may not be so important for the dissertation, and some of the theory from the dissertation may not enter your management report. It is useful to compare with other organisations experiences and ‘best practice’, and cases and theory in the literature, as well as your own organisation’s methods and experience. So consider whether you have or could generate some contacts in similar, perhaps even competing, organisations. There may be industry guidelines also.
The best dissertations usually combine the demonstration of a deep understanding of the theory and the practical focus, and the ability to compare the theory and the practice.
‘In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is!’
equally
‘There’s nothing so practical as a good theory!’
Good theory will give you a firm backbone and structure for your dissertation.
Read more about my views on theory and practice.
The ability to demonstrate reflection of the content and process of the project is essential. It includes addressing the issues of methodology. It includes answering questions such as
- did the method I chose prove to be effective?
- did I find out what I expected?
- what went right / wrong / better / worse than expected?
- what could I have done better or would I do next time to improve things?
- what have I learned / discovered / tested / evaluated
- how does the theory relate to practice?
It means being aware and developing awareness of what is happening within and around you with respect to all angles of this project. It includes tangibles and intangibles, personal and impersonal aspects (though of course you may choose to keep some aspects private). It includes awareness of the effect of your intervention and impact in the subject of the project. It means in a sense evaluating your own contribution - its strengths and weaknesses, and areas for further work. You may not be able to evaluate an actual implementation (especially if it hasn’t happened!) but you might be able to evaluate the effectiveness of your contribution towards a decision whether or not to implement your proposals.
So I will be looking for your contribution to the topic in terms of familiarity with relevant theory / literature, data analysis and interpretation, and application of standard course concepts. For each of the themes you pursue, you will have to relate the readings and lesson concepts to your particular application, either by way of illustration, or data analysis where possible. Above all, you will need to be critical, showing both the positive and negative sides of arguments, identifying alternative approaches at each stage and justifying the approach you chose. Later, consider how the approach might have been better or worse, on reflection. This includes self-criticism and understanding the strengths and limitations of your own work, as mentioned above.
Literature search is a critical discipline, although it can appear frustrating if you know what you want to do. Its rationale is that your work should be informed by what others have done and learned from related work. You gain significant academic credibility and credit by relating your work to relevant literature / theory. Some sources can be referenced from your course, some are general management, some information systems specific. You will normally be expected to do a supplementary literature review that identifies relevant and probably recent papers in related areas. The literature can be extremely helpful for shaping the main content and argument of your dissertation and argument, by providing a model, a set of principles, or cases for compare and contrast.
Your dissertation should reflect the aspects above as well as relating the content of the project. If it helps, here is a ‘standard’ dissertation structure around which you can base yours. The dissertation needs to present the project in a form which makes a coherent argument or story about development of the project (even if the project itself was less structured! - though you can gain credit for reflecting about lack of structure to an extent!)
- Executive summary
- Introduction to the situation/organisation
- Description of the issue to be addressed
- Business analysis (if appropriate)
- Methodology
- Discussion of relevant literature
- Data analysis / description of findings
- Discussion
- Conclusions, recommendations and further work
- References
- Appendices
It is important to identify at some point (not necessarily immediately) your main ‘research question(s)’. Then it will be clear what has to be done, what story you are going to tell and what structure should be followed. This will then colour the structure and chapter headings which can become more colourful and applied than the generic headings above – they become your own. Sometimes a significant theoretical framework will serve as a useful structure for your investigation and for (parts of) the dissertation. It is important to be able to justify the logic of your story as far as possible according to the theory. If the theory of your issue has four elements, then you should deal appropriately with each of these four elements. That is not to say the theory has all the wisdom, or that it cannot be criticised, but it often forms a helpful and defensible structure.
- Do I have to implement the dissertation’s proposals? The answer is no; however your evaluation of your proposals would benefit from comparing with the acid test of how successful the proposal in fact was perceived to be.
- Can confidentiality can be assured to the organisation(s)? Yes, if required, by ensuring that only the marker, second marker and external examiner if necessary read your dissertation.
