Unit Synopsis
This unit aims to equip you with the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to manage strategic initiatives within an organization effectively. This unit will introduce you to the concepts, principles, life cycles, and performance domains of portfolio and program management. This unit will specifically address how organisations apply management techniques to initiate, select, prioritise, and execute projects and programs within a portfolio contributing effectively to the organisational success through strategic alignment, resource optimisation, risk management, stakeholder engagement, benefits realisation, monitoring, and control. This unit will also introduce you to systems thinking concepts, principles, and tools that help solve complex problems within portfolios and programs.
Details
| Level | Postgraduate |
|---|---|
| Unit Level | 9 |
| Credit Points | 6 |
| Student Contribution Band | SCA Band 4 |
| Fraction of Full-Time Student Load | 0.125 |
| Pre-requisites or Co-requisites |
Pre Requisite Units: PPMP20007 & PPMP20009 Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework). |
| Class Timetable | View Unit Timetable |
| Residential School | No Residential School |
Unit Availabilities from Term 2 - 2026
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Postgraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Assessment Tasks
| Assessment Task | Weighting |
|---|---|
| 1. Portfolio | 30% |
| 2. Written Assessment | 50% |
| 3. Online Quiz(zes) | 20% |
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of ‘pass’ in order to pass the unit. If any ‘pass/fail’ tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully (‘pass’ grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the ‘assessment task’ section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%).
Past Exams
All University policies are available on the Policy web site, however you may wish to directly view the following policies below.
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of policies are available on the Policy web site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Source: Lecturer feedback.
The number of assessments should be reduced from four to three to prevent over-assessment of students.
Propose a revision to the unit profile to redesign the assessment structure.
The assessment structure was formally revised from four assessments to three. No updated Unit Proposal was required, as the fourth assessment was merged with Assessment 3: Online Quiz. The redesigned three-assessment structure is better aligned with student effort and the intended learning outcomes.
Source: SUTE, lecturers' feedback and reflection
Although additional learning materials are provided to students via Teams each week, they rarely access or engage with content beyond what is included in the lecture slides.
It is recommended to incorporate blended learning into instructional materials and align these elements with assessments, as students tend to engage more with content that is formally evaluated.
The weekly lecture offering was reorganised to align with the themes covered in weekly tutorials, providing a more integrated learning sequence. The team introduced additional materials, including recorded lectures and supplementary readings, to encourage engagement beyond the lecture slides.
Source: UC
The applied development of the assessment significantly enhanced students' realisation of the learning outcomes. However, the assessment requires thorough tutor follow-up to ensure students understand the requirements.
Provide tutors with a standardised briefing or induction on the revised assessments to support consistent follow-up and ensure students understand assessment requirements across all teaching locations. Additionally, interim formative assessments are required to track students' progress and ensure they understand the material.
In Progress
Source: UC
Sudden turnover among casual teaching staff in Brisbane during 2025 T1 negatively affected teaching continuity, contributing to a decline in student evaluation scores and grade consistency for that term.
Intensive follow-up and effective communication with teaching staff shall be maintained to identify and foresee any potential issues.
In Progress
Source: Students' written comments in SUTE
Students reported delays in responding to questions and emails, as well as mid-term changes to the class timetable, which affected the consistency and organisation of the unit's delivery.
The timetable change was necessary due to the sudden turnover of teaching staff during the term. To mitigate such disruptions in the future, we will finalise timetable changes only after consulting the administration team and investigating potential clashes beforehand. Communication expectations, including response timeframes, will also be set clearly at the start of the term, supported by the casual-staffing induction and continuity plan outlined in Section 3.
In Progress
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- Examine and use portfolio and program management concepts, principles, and life cycles to implement strategic initiatives within an organisation.
- Acquire and apply the knowledge of portfolio and program management performance domains as strategic implementation tools within an organisation.
- Analyse contemporary scenario problems to provide recommendations for appropriate solutions.
- Evaluate the strategic plan of an organisation to bring about strategic business change and develop a portfolio management plan.
The unit contributes to the required number of academic study units for students wishing to undertake professional certification (such as CAPM or PMP) with the Project Management Institute (PMI).
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Portfolio | • | • | ||
| 2 - Written Assessment | • | • | • | |
| 3 - Online Quiz(zes) | • | • | • | |
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |
| 1 - Knowledge | • | • | ||
| 2 - Communication | • | • | ||
| 3 - Cognitive, technical and creative skills | • | • | • | • |
| 4 - Research | • | • | • | |
| 5 - Self-management | • | |||
| 6 - Ethical and Professional Responsibility | • | |||
| 7 - Leadership | • | |||
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 8 | |