TOPIC 6.4: Writing your Workplace Project Proposal

Finalise your project idea with your Sponsor

1. Schedule a meeting with your Sponsor to go over your draft proposal and ideas you have discussed in workshop
2. Ensure your Sponsor understands and agrees to what you plan to do.
3. Ensure your plan is practical and that there are no hidden agendas or misunderstandings.
4. Gain your Sponsor’s support and advice on an implementation plan for the project.

The outcome of this meeting should be an agreement about the scope and implementation of your project in your workplace. The Sponsor needs to sign the Sponsor Approval form, which is available on the GSZ634 unit site under Workplace Project. This approval form needs to be submitted with your final proposal.

Complete the workplace project proposal. The proforma for the final proposal will be available on your GSZ634 unit site. The site will become available two weeks prior to the beginning of the teaching period.

Your final proposal will also take into consideration the feedback from your Academic Advisor on your draft proposal.

Developing a Methodology to Conduct your Workplace Project Investigation

To complete your Proposal, you also need to choose one or two methods to investigate the issue or challenge you have chosen.

Your methods may be qualitative or quantitative.  Qualitative methods can help provide a preliminary understanding of the problem. For example, you conduct interviews to assess project members’ opinions about the problem or opportunity. Quantitative methods may be required to assess the advantages or disadvantages of new ideas. For example, you may need to document the cost of the current system to compare it to the cost of a new proposed arrangement.

Appreciative Inquiry (Module 3 of this unit) is a useful qualitative research method, which you could use to engage stakeholders and to collect information for your project. You will also learn other methods in GSZ634.

Your first major decision is whether to use qualitative or quantitative data gathering methods or a mixture of both.

Regardless of the method used for data gathering, some considerations apply, including:

• Sampling reliability: What issues should you consider in choosing the most suitable respondents?
• Sampling frame: What criteria will you use to choose your respondents?
• Data collection methods. For example, will you use interviews or survey questions?
• Data recording procedures: How and when will you record the data gathered?
• Number of respondents required: How many people do you need to contact for a useful sample?
• Data analysis procedures: How will you analyse the data?
• Presentation of results. How will you present the results?

Qualitative methods

Qualitative methods are good to use when you want to find out what people think about an issue, but you aren’t sure how to ask closed-ended questions. Sometimes we have to find out what people know or think about an issue before we ask specific questions.

Qualitative methods are designed to elicit opinions and ideas from a group of people in a way that accurately reflects what they think, without introducing excessive bias from the interviewer or method used.

Some examples of qualitative methods include:

• Open-ended interview questions (for example Appreciative Inquiry questions)
• Case studies
• Focus groups (also called Group Discussions)
• Document analysis
• Survey Monkey

Ethical considerations

The PSMP workplace project has obtained ethical clearance from the university (QUT Ethics Approval Number 1400000980). You are not required to obtain ethical clearance for each of your projects as the whole unit GSZ634 is covered by a university ethical clearance.