6006SSL Continuous Professional Development Assignment
RESIT Reflection on e-portfolio
This assignment consists of 3 tasks:
Task 1: Link to your e-portfolio
Task 2: Professional Development Reflection
Task 3: Career Plan
Task 1
Adjust the SHARE setting for your e-portfolio to allow anyone to view it and
paste a link to your e-portfolio below:
e-portfolio checklist
Make sure your e-portfolio contains activities equivalent to a minimum of 75 CPD
points.
In the table below, record the activities from your e-portfolio, adding up to a minimum
of 75 CPD points.
CPD activity Date CPD points
Leadership Foundation-leading yourself 28/02/2024 10
Introduction to Web Design and
Development 02/03/2024 10
Getting Started as a Full-Stack Web
Developer 17/03/2024 10
Writing a Proposal 18/03/2024 10
Root Cause Analysis: Systemic Problem
Prevention 19/03/2024 10
PowerPoint: Transforming Presentations
with Cinematic Effects 19/03/2024 10
Marketing on Instagram 23/03/2024 10
Change Management for Projects 25/03/2024 10
Scrollytelling: Creating a One-Page Web
Experience 26/03/2024 10
Requirements Elicitation for Business
Analysis 26/03/2024 10
Total points 100
Task 2: Professional Development Reflection
As part of my resit assignment, I engaged in 10 CPD activities which will be essential
for my career as a project manager. To understand the key learning, I will reflect on
my professional development in activities which include Root Cause Analysis,
Marketing on Instagram, Change management for projects and business analysis
through stakeholder conversation. The goal of the reflection is to help me identify
what I have learned, areas that need improvement, how the activity may be of
benefit in the future, and key strengths, weaknesses and development required
along the way.
Two key CPD activities I engaged in were web-design and development and Root
Cause Analysis (RCA). I engaged in RCA having realised my weakness when it
comes to understanding customer problems when designing the website.
Particularly, RCA involved a web design problem, where the customer kept
complaining of poor user experience and unlatching the interface of a website we
had developed during my internship. As noted by Rosenfeld (2014), RCA helps to
systematically prevent and solve underlying issues rather than just treating the
symptoms. A useful learning of RCA was that I was dealing with symptoms that
customers complained about rather than the cause of poor outcomes that made the
poor negative web outcomes. Using the RCA, I realised that the root cause was a
lack of team collaboration and communication to understand requirements. For
example, the customer complained directly to me, but with my poor understanding
and experience of the web, failure to involve a team member with significant
knowledge of web design created a gap between what the customer expected and
what we delivered. From RCA activity, in the future, when communicating with
customers, I will also engage the project team, which has more experience than I do,
so that they understand the problem better. Specifically, while I learned I am good at
communicating with customers, I learned a key area of development is collaborating
with team members who have complementary skills to help understand the problem
better. For example, in my case, I need to develop collaborative skills when it comes
to solving customer problems because it is through collaboration with the project
team that I will gain important web development skills. At the same time,
understanding the problem much better may improve my confidence in web design
and addressing customer problems.
Further, Marketing on Instagram activity gave me valuable lessons that I lacked
proper awareness of how to develop more appealing and engaging content. The
reason I engaged with the activity despite this realisation was to learn significant
marketing tips on Instagram, which may help me market different projects that I may
market in the future. As noted by Bansal (2018), effective content on Instagram
needs to take into consideration colour, logo placement, and visually attractive and
valuable content. In my case, when marketing the website project I had developed
previously, I started by identifying a suitable colour (brown), which is a reflection of a
simple yet organic and wholesome website. However, my content was less attractive
and engaging, an issue that made me realise I had poor experience with Instagram
marketing. With Instagram marketing being an important future resource for driving
sales and enhancing the online presence of different organisational projects,
engaging in Instagram marketing activity helped me learn a key area of development
to excel in Instagram marketing. For example, reviewing my previous web-design
Instagram marketing content, I realised that they were too descriptive and were not
elegant and eye-catching. For example, my Instagram marketing lacked engaging
and eye-catching content such as hashtags, emojis, tagging partners in
conversation, adding contact information and calls for action. To perfect this area, I
will book a course with Meta to enhance my understanding of the fundamentals of
social marketing advertising.
The fourth CPD activity was change management for projects. Despite my
knowledge and previous experience with projects, having worked as a management
intern, the reason I chose this activity was to understand how better placed I was to
manage change. A useful lesson from the activity was that project change affects
different individuals differently, which meant that managing resistance and
successful change emerged by understanding and engaging people in the change
process (Amarantou et al., 2018). Despite having prior experience with change
management, understanding how effective I was in change management in the past
may help improve my effectiveness in future. A case reference was a construction
company I worked for during COVID-19 as a management intern, and I was
retrenching people due to the decline and cancellation of projects. Presently, from
the change management activity, I am better equipped to manage project change,
given my strength in change management skills such as motivating teams, managing
resistance by engaging teams, training teams to adapt to change, and effectively
addressing their concerns. For example, during the project change management
activity, I realised that my experience as a project management intern shaped my
understanding of change management. Comparing my management intern
experience with the CPD activity, I would say that I have relevant insights and
techniques that shape my experience and knowledge needed to manage change
effectively, such as planning communication, motivating teams and addressing
resistance. I plan to use these strengths in managing change for projects better as a
project manager in future.
Task 3: Reasons for Fialed Original Assignment and Improvements Made
There are three reasons I failed the original assignment. The first reason was that I
did not take professional development seriously during the semester. This was evid-
enced by LinkedIn activity, which only took 3 days to complete. In this assignment, I
have taken seriously my LinkedIn activity by doing 10 new activities but within an ex-
tended time. This took place between 28 th February and 23rd March, with the reason
for conducting the activities within the extended time but still inadequate being in-
formed by the resit submission date. However, compared to my previous CPD activ-
ities, more time allowed me to get into details of the key lessons learned from the
activities.
The second problem was task 2 being too generalised and vague, with a lack of a
detailed overview of the activities I did and the actions I would take. To enhance this,
I have linked the CPD activities to my previous experience and specific activities un-
dertaken. For instance, CPD on web design and problem-solving was informed by a
real problem involving customer complaints about poor user experience and non-
matching interface. Also, when looking at managing change in projects, I referenced
my working experience with a construction company that experienced change during
COVID-19 to show my key strengths and how this will shape my future role as a pro -
ject manager.
The third problem related to task 3 was vague and lacked specific information about
the goal achievement. To address this problem, I used my specific lessons from the
activity and experience to inform the recommendations in the next section. This in-
cludes referencing specific actions like enrolling on a Meta course to understand so-
cial media marketing better.
Task 4: Planning for the future
In future I would like to work in the fashion sector in the role of project manager. With
my CPD activities and previous experience being linked to project management in
the past, where I managed change in construction projects and was also involved in
web-design projects, being employed in the fashion sector may enhance my
experience to improve my CV. First, the fashion industry still needs Instagram
marketing, and as an intern, I may build my experience and CV by engaging in
Instagram marketing activity. However, presently, I lack the essential skills for the
Instagram marketer to make the content more eye-catching and engaging, as was
evidenced by my CPD activity on marketing on Instagram. Consequently, in the next
6 months, I will enrol for fundamentals of social marketing advertising with Meta,
where I will gain significant insight and knowledge on how to use social media for
marketing, such as Facebook, Instagram and Threads. By the end of the course, I
will acquire skills in how to build ads from Facebook and Instagram business
accounts, how to write creative briefs and how to create social media apps. By the
end of the course, I must be able to craft effective and compelling visuals for
Instagram and Facebook ads, in addition to evaluating ad effectiveness through
engagement and conversion rate.
Secondly, in the next 3 years, I plan to work as a project management intern, where I
will be in charge of new fashion projects such as web design and website
enhancement and new product and marketing campaigns projects. Previously, I
realised that an area that I need to improve on is collaborative work to enhance my
experience where I am weak, something that I learned from the web design activity.
To achieve this, as a project management intern, I will consult with an experienced
project team when there is a problem with the client project. Working collaboratively
will help me understand the problem better and even gain insights on how I can
address the problem. By the end of the 3 years, I should be able to work
collaboratively with project teams in the RCA process and find the best solutions to
project problems.
References
Amarantou, V., Kazakopoulou, S., Chatzoudes, D., & Chatzoglou, P. (2018).
Resistance to change: an empirical investigation of its antecedents. Journal of
Organizational Change Management, 31(2), 426-450.
Bansal, R. (2018). Brand Marketing on Instagram: Learn to use the power of visuals
to market your brand. Rishabh Printers.
Rosenfeld, Y. (2014). Root-cause analysis of construction-cost overruns. Journal of
construction engineering and management, 140(1), 04013039.