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PPMP20012 - Portfolio and Program Management

General Information

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 1 - 2025

Term 1 - 2025 Profile
Brisbane
Melbourne
Online
Sydney
Term 2 - 2025 Profile
Brisbane
Melbourne
Online
Sydney

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).

Assessment Overview

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

This information will not be available until 8 weeks before term.
To see assessment details from an earlier availability, please search via a previous term.

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%).

Consult the University's Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades

Past Exams

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Previous Feedback

Term 1 - 2023 : The overall satisfaction for students in the last offering of this course was 78.95% (`Agree` and `Strongly Agree` responses), based on a 43.68% response rate.

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: Feedback from the student evaluation survey
Feedback
Provide formative feedback on students' performance
Recommendation
Encourage students to seek clarification on their marks. Include a dedicated session in the tutorial lesson plan after releasing the marks to discuss assessment results. Continue to incorporate Turnitin rubrics for each assessment to streamline administration and enable markers to provide direct feedback on student submissions specifically.
Action Taken
In Progress
Source: Lecturer feedback unit evaluation survey
Feedback
Remove the program management content for weeks that we do not teach it (Weeks 3, 6,7, 8, and 12). Programs and portfolios are seeking completely different agendas and they do not fit in this unit we need to gradually make this unit just about PPM.
Recommendation
To sharpen the unit's focus on portfolio management, we should streamline the program management content. We should only retain program management aspects that directly relate to portfolio management, such as the program life cycle and governance.
Action Taken
The teaching materials have been streamlined in accordance with the recommendations. However, the topic of program management is introduced only in specific areas, particularly when discussing the relationship between portfolio, program, and project.
Source: Lecturer feedback
Feedback
Students lack business strategic management knowledge to understand the ideation process to initiate portfolios.
Recommendation
Continue enhancing slides with up-to-date practical data, information, and references, while seamlessly integrating them into class activities. However, it's important to note that accessing information about for-profit organizations' portfolios, like their strategic plans, might be challenging due to limited publication and accessibility. This constraint is not easily surmountable. Particularly, students who have not had any working experience (i.e enrolling Master's degree right after taking their bachelor's degree) or have not had a business background (i.e. studied business-related courses previously) would need to be provided with references, business cases, example, etc to establish a foundational knowledge for the unit.
Action Taken
Business cases from for-profit organizations were provided. New emerging trends related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were discussed in lectures and assessments. For instance, in Assessment 1, which focused on consolidated portfolios, a case about Woolworths aiming to achieve sustainability goals was introduced.
Source: Feedback from the student evaluation survey
Feedback
It is highly appreciated to enhance the online quiz 1 since the questions were situational and quite challenging.
Recommendation
Offer sample questions for the online quiz corresponding to each learning week, allowing students to review lecture content and prepare for the quiz. Integrate case studies into tutorial material to help students become accustomed to situational questions.
Action Taken
In Progress
Unit learning Outcomes
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To see Learning Outcomes from an earlier availability, please search via a previous term.