PO9: Manage an assignment

Managing an assignment effectively will comprise agreement of scope,

objectives and resources; planning how to monitor and review progress
(including the use of specific project management tools); and post-assignment
evaluation.
Trainees can demonstrate their competence in a host of ways, including:

managing an external or internal audit assignment from start to finish,

including delegation of individual responsibilities and communicating
findings and recommendations to management
learning how to effectively use project management software, or adapt
programs such as MS Excel or Google Docs, to monitor and illustrate a
specific assignment, as part of support provided to a project manager
setting up a system for educating non-finance staff in essential financedriven procedures (eg purchase orders, timesheets, etc), including
identifying and prioritising relevant colleagues, agreeing parameters with
their workplace mentor supervisor and non-finance managers, organising
or delivering the coaching and evaluating outcomes against prior
performance.

Remember that the assignments they focus on to achieve this objective need to
fall in line with organisational and/or departmental objectives. The next step is
for them to answer the challenge questions for this objective in the trainee
development matrix (TDM):

Trainees should describe their role in managing a discrete assignment

they should think about overall aims and expected outcomes
include specific responsibilities, including those they were originally
assigned and those they have devised for themselves
they should explain how and why certain responsibilities emerged as
the assignment progressed.
Trainees should specify how they applied learning from their day-to-day
role in the assignment?
they should consider competencies whose potential you stretched
during the project, of which, through passing them on to others, will
have developed your coaching, training or development skills

they should also consider previous projects they may have carried out,
including skills they developed as well as knowledge they acquired as a
result of things that may not have gone the way they planned.
They should specify what they learnt from the assignment that will
helped in their day-to-day role
focus on those competencies you developed purely as a result of the
project but remember these can include skills and knowledge acquired
through working alongside more experienced colleagues in finance, or
colleagues in other functional teams (eg HR, marketing, sales,
operations, etc) and which will enhance your performance in your
mainstream duties (or in future assignments).

Performance objective 9 is linked to Paper F1, Accountant in Business, and

Paper P3, Business Analysis.
For PER support and advice on answering challenge questions
www.accaglobal.com/students/acca/per/support