*** P3 December 2011 Exam was: Post your comments and vote in Instant Poll ***

For the project management question part (b) what did you guys put if you remember!!!!….the examination was a real torture for me,it was too much time pressured…

It almost didn’t seem fair with the long scenarios and limited/zero time to answer plan as we’re advised by our tutors. I ended up just writing in order to make up time leaving answers very unstructured and skipping a 20 marker! ..

all i can say is, it was NOT tough, but there was an immense time pressure which was hard to cope with.

i 4got to evaluate the franchise strategy after acquisition. Damn… probably gonna fail this time

in question 1 i used strengths and weaknesses internally and pestel for the external part. Was this ok or it needed something else????

I found it very very time pressured. I used pestle for external and just SW for internal. Answered questions 1,2 and 4.

has anyone used porter diamond + 5 forces in 1?

Gosh i screwed big time by spending too much time on Q1a with SWOT Analysis and couldnt do much on b and c. For Q2 – Culture Web and Harmon Process/Strategy Matrix was ok but then i was left with 15 minutes to do Q3 which i scrambled like mad to write whatever that came to my mind but could attempt c at all!

Looks like i’m going to pray hard for a miracle!!

Guys:

Porter and PESTEL are both used to evaluate the external environment.

I used 9 M’s Model to evaluate the internal but nobody else seems to have used this. Everyone else used SWOT. Oh well….Hoping for reasonable pass. 🙂

PESTEL for macro environment, P5F for industry environment for GET. Did a table of the financial info and a few comments, then a bit of SWOT for the others bits such as the IT system and brand, although I didn’t use SWOT as headings.

I don’t honestly remember the franchise part in 1(b)? It asked about the strategy so I used a bit of PESTEL to compare the two countries, talked about the adv and disadv of acquisitions (brief) and mentioned the possibilities of strategic alliance to reduce the risks. Summarised with SFA criteria.

CSF and KPI seemed straightforward.

I did (2) a (3) afterward.

I agree that the main problem with P3 is time management, I actually finished 10 mins early so I think I may have been too brief in places.

Just hope the marker can read my writing – nowhere else do I have to write for three hours using a biro!

Good luck to everyone! x

There were too many things to write…
Q1 a – used PESTEL and SWOT
Q1 b – Porter’s Diamond, SFA
Q2 – cultural web
for b – Process Matrix
Had about 15 min for Q3

Too many things to write yes but time management was mostly examined.
Q1: pestel, 5 forces, diamond, sfa, and waffle for csf’s keeping in mind the franchise
Q3: project mgt very easy and c part was mostly brainstorming with a lot of IT involved
Q2: Harmon’s rest can’t remember

Hope I pass thank God

kiileo said 1 minute ago:

I know from an article the examiner hates doing a swot when not specifically asked. I avoided that!!!

I think thats wrong/quote the article. Examiner doesnt HATE SWOT because Its part of the study guide. Infact SWOT seems to be the most effective model here in q1 (16 / 4 – 4each) as for all those who used PORTER PESTEL DIAMOND blah blah I think u guys just wasted a lot of time . I used SW and OT for internal and external and think managed well. I had trouble in 1b , but rest was good and hoping a pass.