16 May 2026

0:00 One person. >> Um, Miriam, have you got a question? >> No, sorry, I forgot to remove it. >> Right. So the next part we're going to just discuss is projects and strategy. Um and then KPIs. Um so projects and strategy so strategy implementation is it an operations

0:45 event or is it a project management activity? project management activity I think. >> Okay. Um it can be both. Okay. So um to become the first person on the moon um if you didn't have capability, you could say that's a project management thing. But if you've got the capability and you're wanting to target something, it could be an operations um thing um when you're doing your analysis on your organization structure.

1:34 Sometimes when you're doing strategic objectives, you pull out a structure and create a project team to go and deliver it. Right? That doesn't necessarily mean that you've deviated from a functional structure into a matric structure. just means you've created a temporary organization to go and deliver things. But um terminology, I mean going to look at this example of building a house, right? The purpose is to provide a safe and comfortable environment for somebody. An outcome is a safe and comfortable environment. So the purpose and outcome are kind of similar. The object is to build the house. The output of building the house is the house and how you do it is the activity, right? Um

2:22 projects can be a can be a contribution to strategy. Okay, this is just a diagram of product life cycle, how operations deliver it, how project management implement it. Okay, handover comes from an organization and it that delivers capability and value adding, right? Project management and strategy is generally categorized by three Ps. You've got a program, that's a group of projects. You've got a portfolio which is a group of projects and programs managed together to achieve a strategic

3:09 objective and um you have a project which is a temporary endeavor to create a particular unique outcome. Okay. And then strategic contribution of projects. Projects can can um help you build capability. they can increase organizational development, right? Um there isn't a right and wrong way to describe projects and operations and strategy. Right? I've had um as a ops director had clear objectives that strategic that I haven't had to create a

3:56 project management team to manage, you know. um in increasing rate of a production system um so that we can deliver to a larger market um didn't require an operations I didn't require a project management team to govern. It required an operation person to go and work out what had to happen and um create all the capability to get an increased rate. Um but the the key thing is when you're when you're um looking at a project that's strategic that allows you to generate to to go into do something different to make your company have more

4:42 capability and to make it um develop more and add more value. The project doesn't have any revenue recognition with it. It's about growth. Okay. So don't get confused about time, cost, scope and doing a project for a customer and get confused about doing a project which allows you to build capability. Yes, you can talk about both, right? But you need to make sure that you clearly distinguish the difference between the two of them. Um there's the wheel right and hes at each stage as you transition through it. There is little projects that have time, cost, and scope that allow you to get there.

5:29 You could use this model, right, and think of what your competitive advantage was and talk about what projects you did to move to each one of the stages if you wished and your report. Okay. And this just shows that there is a handover from programs, projects into production which is repeatable, consistent um and then project removal at the very end. And that's just the how how a portfolio

6:14 of projects would look in an organization's um an organization's strategy to create external value. Okay. So I guess key take away from that is when you have strategic objectives which are about building value, you can have project management step in and deliver them, right? But just don't get confused in what a strategic pro project is uh which sits under a portfolio and a project and which is your way of recognizing revenue and managing and and generating cash for your business. Okay. Any

7:03 questions? This is the last slide pack right and I would expect you to see um this in your report right so it's about how you measure performance um when I took you through the pack that I had the other on that showed the three businesses it spoke about measuring KPIs

7:48 that um are related related to operational performance, right? You can have um KPIs that you need to improve the performance on as a strategic objective, right? And it's good that you can link that performance um to your projects or your operation system. Um performance management should be considered as a conduit for proactive achievement of an organization objectives and it is about providing focus and direction and it's the first step in managing performance and understanding what you need to try and achieve. An effective performance management system helps to break down objectives so they are clear and make sense to all peoples and levels in organization. Measuring performance

8:35 gives you a baseline in which you access assess improvement. Has anybody ever been involved in business plan deployment? >> We have we have something called balance scorecard. I think it's related to this, right? >> Yeah. Balance scorecards. That's a way of measuring a manager's performance. >> We have like meetings to prepare this end of the year. So and then the pen score card I mean to prepare the pen scorecard every department or every manager should uh report it then in this meeting then once the management or the board decides then the uh performance review will be on the balance score card. >> Good. So in your assignment you can pull that in. Um, a balanced scorecard is a

9:23 really good way of taking the organization's objectives and putting it into a department level and measuring a manager or a department's performance. Um, this is just an example of metal productivity. So you can measure how good um each um each comp each each country did in the Commonwealth Games. It's a KPI, right? Um performance management is at different levels in the organization. So remember the operations um theme which was

10:10 quality speed dependability flexibility and cost. These are things you can measure at a low level in the organization. At a strategic level, you can measure risk and resilience, capital utilization, you know, so how capital utilization is really how well utilized these things are and service and revenue efficiency and cost. So um strategic level growth is measured on the amount of revenue that you do or the amount of underlying operating profit that you generated free cash you have and um capability for innovation. An example of new pipelines and offerings. These are all different different levels in which you would measure performance in a business.

10:56 The operations themes again cost, dependability flexibility quality speed um can allow you to make decisions whether this example here of your tradeoff. If you get a taxi, you'll get there faster than if you get a bus, you're trading off um speed, but you're getting a more dependable service. It's cheaper, more expensive, right? They're all relatively important, but we need targets so that we know what we have to do and how we are performing, right? And if we're going on the right track, but they need they need to be measurable and they need to be specific. There's absolutely no point in measuring something that doesn't change the dial in your organization.

11:45 Some organizations get so obsessed with measuring OEE overall equipment effectiveness, but it doesn't drive any growth because all they're trying to do is threat asset and get a return on their investment. Well, which is fine, but it doesn't really link into the high level strategy business. So, we pick points along the way that we measure so we know that we're getting there. We measure, take, stop, continue, and if need adapt and change direction. So targets come from strategic objectives and division objectives to department objectives to team objectives. Targets come from the strategy. Okay. Different types of measure. Back

12:30 one slide please. Yeah, >> thank you. Yeah, sure. So different types of measures you can measure um usage you can measure you can measure inputs and you can measure outputs and you can use this to identify whether your conversion process is effective or not. Um, input measures can be deliveries coming

13:17 in. Output measures can be deliveries going out. This is just an example of you can input fuel and do you get an effectiveness of um going faster or not. And the process measure is the amount of miles per hour that you get from your inputs. Um this is an example of changing of checking a cylinder head and changing a gasket. Right? So you're using something to measure to verify that you have done it correctly. Right? Kind of like inspection. But problems with traditional performance management approaches are

14:03 they can be too focused and limited areas of performance i.e. finance. So if you walk into a production management area and you see somebody reporting revenue and operating profit, right, there is while they're exceptionally important measures, they're not really tangible for the person who's working in the operating area to understand what he needs to do to change that. You need to be able to convert what the revenue is to um operational items. For example, you do 23 million pounds worth of sales. 23 million pound worth of sales is a,000 widgets that you've manufactured. If you want to get to 25 million worth of sales, you might want to um manufacture 1,100 widgets.

14:49 So, the measure would be um the amount of widgets that you're outputting in line with that target because that's something that you can tangibly measure. you can't tangibly measure the revenue. Okay. So, it needs to be simplified and it can create um system overload. I report revenue as an operations director because I report to the board. Teams below me don't report revenue to me. They they report performance and um outputs of parts and outputs of inputs of receivables.

15:37 So I mean there's perspectives you've got the financial element right but the internal operational links to that and so does the customer link to that as well. So these are the parts that are important to measure and they'll take care of this. What things could you measure from a customer satisfaction? How many times do you order something and then at the end of it you get an email saying, "Are you happy with what you've ordered? And um can you please fill in this report or this survey and tell us what we need to do differently?" those reports get turned into um

16:24 into a KPI me 2 seconds. So, Sorry about that. Um and so you can measure customers perspective, customer

17:10 satisfaction through surveys and um they'll get turned into things like net promoter score. Have you ever heard of them in your business? No. NPS net promoter scoring. So it's just a it's a a mechanism of taking customer feedback and actually giving yourself a weighted scoring in which you can then target how you move it. Um the theory is if you move net motor scoring then you move the amount of um revenue for example that you generate internal operations you know um financial

17:56 reporting would be cash flow revenue EBIT okay internal operations might measure inventory terms because that turns into cash flow um measure inventory as that turns into managed working capital managed working capital is cash that's due plus the inventory you've got on the shelf and the whip. These are all perspective lenses that allow you to um influence the financial or the overall shareholder value of the organization. Do can you all relate to KPIs that you have within your business just now when I'm talking through this? >> Yes.

18:42 >> Yeah. So when you're writing your report, you might find that you're measuring something that doesn't actually influence any financial movement or it influences it very weakly and you might say that we want to measure something else and create action plans from that cuz it aligns the strategic objectives. The purpose of your report is that you can say what your company is doing, analyze it and then make a recommendation or agree with it. Allen scorecard. So that you were mentioning this earlier on. This pulls together financial performance into internal performance and customers expectation. Okay. And if you've got an example of a balance scorecard, please put it in.

19:27 That'll be good. And then talk about how that is linked to the strategic objective that you have discovered. You've discussed way at the beginning as you've opened your paper. And then um how do you know that your strategy is working or how are we viewed by shareholders? Okay. And that's what the financial perspective is. The financial because at the end of the day companies are there to make money, generate cash and grow. And these are the measures in which the shareholders will view on and analysts will view you on as well. An analyst will value you on um how well you're performing and how well aligned they believe your strategy is with the

20:13 external market. And then the customer's perspective, you know, so those surveys that you fill in, you get feedback on the quality of the product, the selection, the price, the functionality, how we serviced the brand. And it allows you to create change levers in which you can redefine your image. You can work on relationship with building and you can strategize what you're actually doing. and the internal process to ensure that you're using the cloud processes effectively and efficiently. You know, operational processes, supply chain engineering, production, distribution, customer management, innovation processes, regulatory processes,

21:01 using change that we discussed, total quality management, six, sigma, continuous improvement to drive risk performance better measures. What do you know that is work in progress? the cost of material plus the cost of the labor before you um put it back into stock and send it to the customer. You can measure change requests. Change request is a good measure to see how if you've got any scope growth and learning growth. How are you building capability and creating value? And this this is about how well human

21:47 capital is being utilized and developed and change levers from that are training investing infrastructure recruiting growth. But I mean when you you pull KPIs together and the most dangerous thing that you can do is to measure something that has got absolutely no purpose. So you need to really do a truth test on it. Okay. Is it worth measuring? Is it meant to be measured? Is it only measuring what you need? Does it consistently measure? Okay. And I've seen so many leaders through my

22:33 career measure something that they know they can influence, but it makes no difference. you know that um the example I gave earlier on people measuring overall equipment effectiveness OEE um one leader put OE to 85% so the machine was getting used 85% throughput didn't change just changed the process time so you made the wrong decision these are it didn't link to anything it didn't drive in more cash consume a little bit more You need to measure something that does impact your strategic direction.

23:18 And you've got this book Payton and Operations Management. So that's the chapters that you should read for your assignment. And then project management by Meredith. You've got that as well. Yeah. We don't have access yet. You don't have access yet. >> Okay, good. So, those are the chapters that you should read as as part of your assignment because you can reference it and use that literature to build up your assignment. But that is the last. What time is it? 2:424 >> 15 to 3. But I said we'll be finished at

24:06 4:00 and it looks like we're 1 hour early. So, I'm going to put the assignment back up. Okay. And I'm just going to talk through it. Starting a bit slow with this. There we go. Yeah, you can see the assignment.

24:51 >> Yes. >> Okay. The purpose of the assignment is to assess your skill in analyzing the performance of an organization. Okay. We develop your understanding of operations and project management within practical context and how they contribute to organizational performance. Okay. The first thing that you need to do is identify an organization you're going to analyze. Has everyone done that? >> Yeah. >> Yes. From my >> Okay. If you're having difficulty with that, reach out very quickly. But I would doing your own organization is the best one I think. But you can do ones um not your organization. Um this may

25:36 present a problem which solve will result in a quantifiable improvement of the performance of the organization. The this may be the organization you work with or another organization that you're interested in. Key thing is that you can get information about it. good information. Um, your objective is to carry out an analysis of your chosen organization performance. In doing this, you must demonstrate your understanding of how it works from a practical point of view and demonstrate the understanding of selected for pieces of class material that can be used within organization. So, it says there selected class material. You don't have to cover everything that you're going through because there's an awful lot in it. But how I would how I would recommend

26:22 that you you structure your report is paragraph one is an introduction to the company. Paragraph the after that is the strategic objectives of the company, the mission statement, the vision, the values, right? And then after that discuss the organization structure member revenue recognition. Okay? Okay. And then once you get from there, you can then pick the path of project management or operations management. And I would always if you're doing operations management, I would want to see the conversion process. Okay. If you're doing project management, I

27:08 would expect to see a discussion on time, scope, cost, risk management, project delivery, and what went well, what didn't go well from it. If you're going to walk through a project, um if you're doing operations management, I would talk about the um main five performance objectives of your operation. So whether it's speed, quality dependability flexibility cost, um on time and full, I would talk about how you measure that. Okay. And how you assess the performance of it. Okay. And then once you've done your analysis on your organization, so you've

27:54 spoke about your conversion process, you've done your fourbs or you've spoke about your project and you've discussed time scope um and you've done your risk management and you know about unknown unknowns and you can feed that back into your next um project you're going to do so that you further evolve your learning. um you then make a recommendation of what you think the business should do to allow it to um align better with its strategic objective. Okay? So there is a conclusion at the end, a recommendation and a conclusion at the end. So there's a positional, there's a discussion and analysis, and then there's a recommendation and conclusion at the end. Okay?

28:41 Right. And it's to be no more than 2,500 words not including your tables, your graphs, your references. Your executive summary and abstract is not required. Okay? And that as always is habit style referencing. Okay? And I'm going to find a little bit about the reflective log for you. Um I'll share it in the chat if I can. Uh, excuse me, doctor. Can I ask you a question please? >> Yes. >> The assignment is two part or one part? >> Two parts. The first part is um

29:28 the first part is your analysis, your second part is your reflective model. So, when you're writing the reflective piece, I would use I would recommend that you use Gibbs reflective cycle. Okay, I'll put that in the chat. The chat here I have a question doctor. >> Mhm. about where where you mentioned um whether we choose operations management

30:15 focus or project management would you recommend let's suppose if I have to choose one of them and then would you recommend that I apply three to four models is there like a number of models you would recommend we apply >> um okay so I said um just so I don't confuse you here, I said that it's fine to be biased towards operations or project management. If you are writing a report and you've got a functional structure, then that's absolutely fine to be a bit more biased towards operations management. Um if you've got a matrix structure, I would expect you to discuss both elements. Okay? But I get that you can't cover everything cuz you get 2,500 bucks. Uh, and then if

31:03 you've got a project management organization, then discuss the project management tools that you used or you didn't use but you think you should use. Um, if I'm honest, see if you if you cover um if you cover the conversion process and you talk about quality and you cover the um how you design something and do supply chain management, right? If you just cover those elements um you'll be fine. But what what I'm saying is don't just put one thing in cuz you won't that doesn't demonstrate that you can do the analysis. But just make sure that you select an appropriate amount to

31:48 demonstrate that you can't cover everything like you get 2,500 words. >> Okay. But what I'm saying is I can't say to you if you use five things it's a pass, right? Because it depends on the quality of what your analysis is. Uh, excuse me doctor for one more clarification please. Mhm. Um, the first part and the second part all should be 2,500 or no the first part. >> Oh, so the first part is 2500. The second part, part two is 4 to 500. So in total you'll be about 3,000. It show it will all be submitted um

32:35 together. >> Um yes together. >> Um I don't have an excellent example of an assignment cuz I've got to hand them back for data reasons um when I get them. So I don't keep them. Sorry. But I've spoke you through um what an assignment should look like. And if you've got any questions, you can reach out to me after this. >> I have a question. One more question. Can we include the operation management and uh project management together? >> Can you ignore it? >> I mean I will go through operation and

33:21 project management both in the same assignment. >> You can do Yes. If your business is a if your business is a metric structure then you can discuss both. Okay. If your business is a functional structure um and you have got a temporary project team in place for doing a strategic objective that's fine. Bring it in. If you went to deliver a strategic objective and didn't happen because you didn't resource it and create a project team excellent. Bring that out and that could be a recommendation. Kat, you have a question.

34:08 >> Yes, thank you. Uh, well, you mentioned uh that you suggest using the Gibbs steps. Uh, but would you cuz like when I'm reading the the description, it's about us analyzing a conversation or like um a conversation we had with uh with you yourself or a student or like the content of that. I understand that you introduced a method of how we should u like put it into place. Uh but can you explain a bit more about the content? >> Well, so that GB's reflective model is only for part two. the reflective piece, right? >> Yes. Part two. >> Yeah. Okay. You don't use that Gibbs reflective model in part one.

34:53 >> Yeah. I'm just talking about part two right now. So, I use this module, but the content. So um in the reflective part what what it's what I'd like to see from that is that you um are able to say what value or what what value you got or didn't get from this class and how it benefited you. So, and that can be um you're right, it could be a conversation, it could be a it could be a topic of content that we covered during the class, right? That you need to do the reflective part to show that you are um

35:40 you are taking something from the class whether it's good or not. That's the whole purpose of it. and you can't pass the assessment without completing it. It's very difficult to fail the the reflective part but if you don't put any structure behind it like don't follow that gives reflective process it can be written in such a way that um it's difficult to read and interpret and with no clear reflective insights and it's very vague and that that's what kind of drives a failure in that. So yes, you could use a conversation we've had. You could even use this one. >> Thank you. >> Okay.

36:29 >> Hi, Dr. Alan. I've just shared something called the Gibs reflective cycle. Basically takes you through the description, the feelings, the evaluation, the analysis, conclusion, and action plan. So it's basically sharing what your thoughts are on this particular assignment and what have you actually learned from it. It's much more of like a diary reflective log and hopefully in the next local session I'll probably take you through one or two three examples. Uh especially for the new students that have actually haven't gone through this maybe I can assist you along with Dina at the local session. Hope it's clear. Although >> yes doctor so my question is uh for a governmental entity like mine the

37:16 ministry of agriculture and fisheries we waste and water resources which has multiple sector over five over than five sector over also over than 200 projects and our goal are mostly nonro profitable. So could you could you guide me what is the best structure for the assignment and uh what are the analy analytical tools that I should focus on or should you um or I should move to another business model not my my uh the minister I work on it's really up to you can do the analysis on on your business I would follow the same structure as everyone else talk about the strategic

38:02 objectives, talk about the organization structure, and then pick a project. If you get 600 projects, you'll have one that you'll be able to just use the literature that we went through with time, course, scope, risk management, and describe all of that. >> Okay. Does anybody have any other questions? Can you please repeat operation and project? Sorry, I don't understand. >> If I want to mix if I want to mix Yeah. If I want to mix between and project

38:49 management science for defining the methods of any I'm sorry your mic isn't very clear now. See again is it clear now? >> Yes. >> Yes. Uh can you please elaborate more if I'm going to have the mix between operational and project management how I can navigate uh which is the best the best way on addressing that in my assignment?

39:36 So if you're going to cover two elements, you're going to cover project management and you're going to cover operations. You're going to cover a metric structure and you've just got to be mindful that you've got 2,500 words. So you'll have to dilute what you cover. So if I was to make a recommendation for your operation, I would cover the conversion process and four vs and then uh for um revenue recognition of projects. I would then walk through a project, right? because you can't do an analyze a full operation and analyze a full project within 2,500 words. It would just become pretty difficult. So, just make sure it's legible and there's a clear distinction between this is what the operation does and this is how the revenue is recognized from

40:22 project delivery from from product delivery. This is the project management element of it and whether the project management is strategic project delivery or is it capability delivery and you're recognizing revenue throughout that and what the stages you went through. >> Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. And don't and and try not get confused about um product design um and um a deliverable project. Just make sure that you can distinct mean they're both projects but just distinct the clear deliverables on it and you can recognize revenue from both depending on how your contract is.

41:07 Okay. Thank you. Um, >> yes doctor. Um, I wanted to ask regarding um selecting a company. Would you recommend um to select um a company that is publicly available or more known I would say than um a local based company let's say that is based in for us to be able to find enough information. >> So the the key thing is that you can get access to the information. If you pick a company that you you've got nobody um you've got no input to, it might become difficult to write a a report on.

41:53 But I have had students who did not work in Toyota write a really good report on Toyota cuz there's loads and loads of information available about them. >> So your your decision needs to be based on can you get access to the right level of information to write a meaningful report. Yeah, because I have been thinking about two companies and one of them is is is a Romani company, but I was thinking if I would actually find enough information. >> You would you wouldn't find enough information. >> Yeah. >> Well, I wouldn't pick it then. >> Yeah. >> That would become too difficult for you to write a report cuz you want to be able to get access to what KPIs are

42:39 getting measured. you know, and if you can see KPIs and you can see that some of them are performing, there's a gap there and you can talk about a recommendation to get the KPI to perform. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions? >> Uh yes, Dr. Gavin. Um it's a quick one. I would like to confirm whether um do we anonymous the company or we have to mention which company that we are doing. >> Um so that your report doesn't go anywhere. So you need to anonymize it as not um it's not necessary because it can't get shared in the public domain.

43:24 >> But if you want to anonymize it, you just need to make sure you can write it appropriately. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay, any other questions? >> Clear so far. But once we will start the assignments, so many question marks will appear. >> Yeah. So you've got Sad there who can take you through that at the next local counselor session. If you need any help, Sad, you can just contact me for any clarity. Okay. >> Uh, sure. No problem. And uh, this is to all the students. Uh, my recommendation this week, of course, is to stop, look

44:12 at the companies, look at the information that you can gather. Do you have access to people? There's so many examples out there, but don't make it difficult on yourself by choosing a company that you don't have access of information. Although it might sound exciting but this is the best way to move forward and through the next local council at least if you have any questions myself and Dina will be there to assist you and support you. All right and you also have access to Dr. Allen's email through me all through Dr. Allen. All right. Thank you. >> Okay. Now um I don't work for the university full time. Um as I mentioned I'm I work for a company called T. So um if you do email me um it will generally be later in the evening that I'll get a response back to you. Okay.

45:03 >> Thanks for listening. >> Thank you. >> I hope you enjoyed the class. Good luck with your assignments. Um and I look forward to reading them. Um, the due date for the assignment is, just have a look. >> June of June. >> June. >> 1st of June. Well, that's good cuz I'm off holiday the week after that. So, guess what I'll be doing in the holiday. >> Okay. Uh, any other questions? >> No, thank you. >> No, thank you. Lovely to meet you all. Um, I know it's quite difficult to do this online. I've hopefully done my best for you and I really hope next year that I can come back to man and do it.

45:50 >> Thank you. >> Okay, take care. >> It's been great to meet you in person and thank you for the effort. >> Thank you. Take care. Bye-bye. >> Thank you, doctor. Have a good day. >> Thank you, Dr. Go. What else going on?