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Group
p3
H
Hassan Saarwar
Meshal Z
Zehra
Samia Aslam
Haroon N
Nasir
N
Nouman Am
meen
Program
A year-long Certificate Programmed in Agribusiness Management by LUMS was
initiated on January 18, 2014. This pioneering endeavor is led by LUMS Suleman Dawood
School of Business and is a first of its kind certificate program in the country. The program has
been made possible through collaboration with Nestle Pakistan as a part of its Creating Shared
Value (CSV) initiatives.
The Executive Certificate in Agribusiness Management (ECAM) is built around a series of short
duration modules covering key disciplines of management with contextual relevance for
agribusiness and the challenges currently facing the sector.
Acquire management knowledge, tools and techniques useful in making sound business
decision.
Develop the ability to assess the agribusiness economic environment and value chain;
plan and formulate strategies to achieve enterprise targets.
Develop and hone leadership competencies to motivate and effectively manage human
resource.
Appreciate the impact of market forces, technology and global trends on agricultural
enterprises and importance of managing risks.
KeyFeaturesoftheProgram
Key features of the program include:
The course material will be delivered using the practical viewpoint through the
case method approach-the hallmark of LUMS.
The course work component of the curriculum comprises 9 modules covering the
foundation of management knowledge with a primary focus o various aspects
agribusiness sector.
DataModelsanddecisionmaking
Entrepreneurship
AgribusinessEconomics
AccountingandcontrolforAgribusiness
Agribusinessvaluechainandtechnology
Financeforagriculture
MarketingandBranding
ManagingHumanResource
AgribusinessstrategyandGlobaltrends
KeyAdvantages
Keyadvantagesoftheprogramfortheparticipantsare
To benefit from the weekend structure of the program offerings allowing participants to
hold their full time jobs.
Challenges
Following are the major challenges related to the program.
Stakeholders
The project was subject to a lot of phases of approvals. It started with the approval
from the stakeholders. This involved approval on the scope which involved the
determination of the extent to which the resources could be stretched to cover different areas
of knowledge involved in building a management program for agribusiness management.
Hence, over the course of the project fulfilling the expectations of the stakeholders became
a real challenge. This involved first convincing them of the relevance of the project to be
undertaken to improve the management processes in Pakistan and after that maintaining the
required quality of work needed.
Team coordination
Coordination among members from different cities was one other challenge. This
project involved a lot of communication among team members from different cities like
Faisalabad and Lahore. This proved to be challenge because of the difference in the work
environments and cultures of the two places
Weather Problems
As there was a lot of field study involved the team members had to face weather
problems and so necessary facilities had to be arranged for.
Constraints
Following are some constraints that the project team had to while design the program
Budget
Due to the amount of field work required and travelling the finances proved to be a
constrained that possibly hampered the quality of the overall project. The main reason for
such a constraint was the stakeholders approval for a very tight budget and also the
extensive research material that was needed from Harvard Business Review proved to take
up a lot of the finances of the project since it was an unforeseen kind of an expense which
kept on increasing as the time passed by as new needs for research kept springing up.
The project team members had to face payment delays during the course of the
project which proved to be a cause of disturbance in the harmony of the working
environment for the team members.
Special approvals
Approvals for big and necessary expenses had to be taken which used to delay the
project
Human Resource
There is a fixed number of Faculty numbers that the university employees which is
also involved in teaching tool and not just research. Another thing that further tightened this
constraint was that there are very few faculty members who are experts in the agriculture
management. This acted as constraint as there was very limited human power that was
available. There was too much pressure on the same amount of human resource which might
have reduced the quality of the project produced.
Risk
Some risks associated with the program are as follow
First time course offered
The fact that the end product of this project would fail and Stakeholders Expectations
not being fulfilled
Cost Risk
The Risk of cost going too high and risk related to the returns from the project in
terms of its success.
Quality Risk
The project not able to produce a good result due to the constraints it faced like
human Resource, budget etc.
Participants Turnover
The major risk related to program was that it not be able to attract the people to
participate in the program.
Focus Groups revealing some interest by the market but what if the market does not
respond in the desired manner
Interviewees Thoughts
According to the faculty member it was a challenging project as there were a lot of
things that couldnt be accounted for at the beginning due to expert knowledge on such a
kind of a project. But he considered this project as a necessity to promote agriculture in
Pakistan. He emphasized that budget constraint and approval from stakeholders are the main
challenges that such researches in Pakistan face.
Requirements Identification
Designing Program
Program Execution
Evaluations
Duration
The project was officially started with the sponsors approach on 11th March 2013
and is estimated to terminate on 28th January 2015. The estimated duration of the project is
243 days. The duration for sub-activities is estimated from interviews with the member of
project team Abdul Rauf and from interviews with Director Dr. Fazal Jawad and other
SDSB Faculty.
Resources
Personnel who are responsible for the different deliverables of project are:
Dr. Arif Iqbal Rana (Director of the Program)
Dr. Fazal Jawad Seyyed (Co-Program Director)
Mr. Abdul Rauf
Dr. Tanveer Shehzad
Other faculty of SDSB
Limitation
Limitation of our project is that Mr. Abdul Rauf (our contact person) refused to share
budgeting and costing of the project with us because of confidentiality issues.
Requirements
Identificcation
LearningNeeed
Assessmentt
1.1
1
1.2
DesiigningProgram
ProgramExecution
Evaluatio
on
1.3
11.4
1.5
Spo
onsor's
App
proach
Visitsto
o
livestockks
Brainstorming
aboutContent
Development
Reggistration
1stInteerim
Evaluattion
Serriesof
meetingswith
spo
onsor
Meetingsw
with
TunnelFarm
mers
Module
Development
Sho
ortlisting
Parrticipants
2ndInteerim
Evaluattion
Requirements
log
l
Meetingsw
with
Agriculture
fields
Program
Outline
Development
Intterviews
3rdInteerim
Evaluattion
LNA
Submissio
on
Program
Content
Approval
Condducting1st
Seemester
4thInteerim
Evaluattion
LNARevieew
Conducting
2nddSemeste
Compreheensive
Evalauttion
LNAAppro
oval
Condducting3rd
Seemester
ConceptPaaper
Condducting4th
Seemester
ConceptPaaper
Review
w
ConceptPaaper
Approvaal
Deliverable Four
Issue
REDC management was confronted with the crucial decision regarding the content of the ECAM
curriculum. As decided in the initial stages, the REDC management had decided to purchase all
the course material from the HBR (Harvard Business Review) board. The decision to purchase
material and the case studies was taken by both the REDC and Nestle the management during the
designing and the brainstorming about content development phase (WBS 1.3). However, the
issue arose during the Module development stage when the budget fell short to purchase the
HBR materials. Some materials and case studies had already been purchased but the REDC
management did not have the resources and the budget to purchase the remaining course
materials. The inability to obtain the HBR course content materials left the management in a
dilemma, leading to conflicting and resenting opinions between the project and the management
team. Nestle, being an important stake holder and the sponsor of the program, insisted that HBR
materials be used for ECAM however due to budget constraints this could not be achieved within
the time, schedule and cost baselines. This left the management with three possible options to
deal with the issue:
Options available
Option 1: Ask the LUMS faculty to write teaching cases for ECAM
Option 2: Use the locally available cases
Option 3: Ask the LUMS faculty to edit and improve upon the locally available cases for ECAM
Conflict resolution
The management was divided over the issue. The Nestle management was against using the
locally available and printed cases for the ECAM curriculum since it wanted to preserve the
executive training element of the program. Hence, Option 2 could not be used and stirred a lot of
debate and conflict with the members of the project team and the project heads. Acute dismissal
of option 2 from the Nestle management, lead to the project management team to adopt Option 3
as the most viable one as it fell close to the cost timeline. Option 1 was expensive and time
consuming both as developing the teaching cases required additional cost and time and getting
the LUMS faculty to agree to allocate extra time for the ECAM program was unfeasible. Using
the integrated change control mechanism, the desired changes to the module and course
curriculum for ECAM were made.
Repercussions
The decision to opt option 3 had considerable repercussions for the project schedule baseline.
The delay in the Module development stage caused an overall delay in the project duration. This
delayed the Program Outline Development phase and consequently the Program content
Approval stage. Hence the program execution phase started later than the planned date. The
exact delay (in days) could not be obtained from the information provided by the REDC
management.