MGMT3002 Techniques for Business Project Management: what is marked?

Direct answer: No. MGMT3002 Techniques for Business Project Management is an Australian National University (ANU) course, while Curtin University uses MGMT3002 for Managing Change. The two share a code and no content, so a study note found by code alone may describe the wrong course.

A doctoral dissertation on student project failure opens with the 2020 Project Management Institute figures that "only 53% of projects were on time, 59% within budget, and 69% met their goal" (Georgalis, 2021), and that is the problem this ANU course exists to train you for. Curtin University's archived handbook (Curtin University, 2021) describes a different subject: MGMT3002 Managing Change, 25 credits, 3.0 contact hours a week through the School of Management, with a one-hour weekly lecture and a two-hour weekly tutorial. Its syllabus says the unit examines "the theoretical and practical perspectives used as a framework to identify change". That is organisational change, not scheduling or scope control.

The Curtin handbook page for the current year loads its content by script, so this guide could not read it and cannot say whether Curtin teaches the unit in 2026. If your enrolment record says Curtin, confirm the unit title and assessment in your Unit Outline on OASIS, which Curtin posts about one week before teaching starts. The rest of this guide covers the ANU course, because its 2026 offering is published in full on the ANU Programs and Courses site.

Source: Australian National University (2026) and Curtin University (2021), read 2026-10-31.

Direct answer: The 2026 Class Summary lists six items that together make up the whole course mark: two participation marks of 5% each, two quizzes of 15% each, group presentations at 25% and an individual project report at 35%. The report therefore carries more than any other single item.

An earlier version of this guide said ANU had not published any weighting. That is now out of date, because the second-semester 2026 Class Summary (class 8926, running 27 July to 30 October) shows every item and its value. Participation A covers weeks 1 to 5 and is due 4 September. Quiz 1 is due 31 August and Quiz 2 on 30 October. The group presentations and the individual project assignment map to all six learning outcomes, while the quizzes map to outcomes 1 and 3.

The course carries 130 hours of work, made up of 3 hours a week in class and at least 7 hours a week on average outside it. You need at least 72 completed units to enrol, so the course sits in third year. The 2026 fee is $5,520 for a domestic fee-paying student and $7,020 for an international student.

Source: Australian National University (2026), Class Summary for second semester 2026, read 2026-10-31.

The Class Summary page shows two return dates that carry the year 2025 inside a 2026 offering, so this guide quotes no due date for the presentations or the final report. The word limit, the referencing style and the penalty for exceeding the length were not verified either: confirm them in your course outline and assignment brief.

Direct answer: The course teaches risk management and systems thinking in week 7, the work breakdown structure (WBS), scope statement and scope creep in week 8, and Gantt charts with the critical path in week 9. Learning outcome 4 then asks you to analyse those frameworks critically, not only to use them.

ANU lists six outcomes. You describe the organisational context in which projects operate, examine contemporary issues in project management globally and in Australia, apply tools to monitor and control projects, critically analyse frameworks and tools, appraise a strategic view of the link between organisational and project-level issues, and produce a report in written and verbal forms. The 2027 version adds "including agile project management" to the outcomes, which hints at where the course is heading.

Read the verbs as a mark scheme. Outcome 1 says describe, but outcomes 4 and 5 say critically analyse and appraise. A report that draws a tidy work breakdown structure and a critical path diagram has shown that you can apply tools, yet it has not argued why this tool suits this project or what it misses. For example, a critical path assumes each task duration is known, while a week 7 risk register says it is not. Setting one against the other is critical analysis, and it is the part your marker cannot award for a diagram alone.

This tracks the course aim: the published description stresses the development, use and integration of management tools and their adjustment to the project environment. Adjustment is the word to answer in each section.

Direct answer: Studies of student teams show that tools are easy to apply but errors still occur. In 100 student projects, 66% of groups found the Project Management Institute techniques easy to apply, yet in 28 Purdue teams Georgalis (2021) found students were not prepared for a missing design aspect.

I found no published error-rate study for WBS or critical path mistakes in particular, so here is what the measured studies do say.

• Ramesh Babu et al. (2024) analysed 100 student project plans and reported that 66% of groups found PMI techniques easy to apply. For cost estimation, 76% of groups used the bottom-up method and 16% used top-down. The paper's summary and a later passage give conflicting figures for PERT and CPM use, so those are not quoted here.
• Georgalis (2021) studied 28 student teams in two aerospace engineering project courses, then 14 teams in a second experiment. Project-based learning did not prepare students enough for the failure cause "missing a design aspect", such as an overlooked requirement. Targeted feedback did not reduce failures against non-targeted feedback, although students said it changed what they did.
• Afzal and Tumpa (2025) surveyed 137 postgraduate project management students at an Australian university in semester 2 of 2022. They reported gains in teamwork, critical thinking and communication.
• Forcael et al. (2015) randomly split students into two groups and taught the critical path method to one through problem-based learning. The authors reported better results for that group. The sample size is not verified, so confirm it in the paper.
• Fernandes et al. (2021) ran a case study of Scrum in two project-based courses at the University of Minho. Students named task allocation, performance tracking and frequent feedback as the benefits. The sample size is not verified.

The pattern is useful for your report: methods taught well are applied well, and what students miss is the thinking behind the method.

Direct answer: Add up the duration of every path through your task network and confirm that the longest is the one you marked critical. Then check that each WBS item has an owner and a deliverable, and that nothing in the scope statement is missing from it.

Here is an invented example, not from ANU, to test your own method. Task A takes 3 days. Tasks B (5 days) and C (2 days) both start after A. Task D (4 days) starts after both B and C. The path A, B, D lasts 12 days and the path A, C, D lasts 9 days, so A, B, D is critical and task C has 3 days of float. If your diagram marks a different path, or marks both, an arithmetic error is hiding in it. Then ask what your risk register says would happen if B ran 4 days late: the project finishes in 16 days and the "float" on C becomes irrelevant.

For the WBS, apply the week 8 test. List each work package, then check it against the scope statement in both directions: every package must trace back to a scope item, and every scope item must appear in a package. A package with no owner or no deliverable is where scope creep starts.

Finally, write your critique paragraph before the diagrams, not after them. For each tool, state one condition under which it fails on your project and one thing you did about it.