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Project monitoring includes the following aspects: (I can edit by myself)

· Know what problems need to be solved;

· Whether there are new requirements or changes in requirements;

· Coordinate the relationship between all parties of the project team, promote the cooperation of the project team;

· Maintain communication with customers and get feedback from customers timely;

· Collect project measurement data and analyze the data of monitoring indicators;

· Report project status to customer, project team and supervisor.

Overview of Your Research

Boston College is one of the organization which is greatly committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. It has several affinity groups which help the university by supporting community building, providing visibility and practical support to the diversity and inclusion efforts. At BC, the recognized affinity groups receive financial support through a budget which is determined annually, they have access to a meeting space, can use the name of the college and other identifications such as the logo when carrying out approved activities and they have access to technology including website support. They are also able to be afforded logistical and other support from the office for Institutional Diversity and representation on the BC Diversity Advisory Committee.

a. Systems of software researched

Affirmity

From the online search, there was no indication of the organizations which were utilizing this type of software. However, it has been shown to provide a wide range of benefits to its users. They include:

· Reducing administrative burden of ERG management which saves time and allows the diversity officers to enhance, grow, and scale ERGs across the organization.

· Helps in connecting employees within the organization with diversity focused events using the software which is able to integrate and automate all the processes of the ERGs.

· The software supports sophisticated metrics and is able to deal with real time data which enables the diversity leaders to track employee resource group activities and measure engagement for a clear view of ROI.

It has a wide range of features which carry out different functions

· Event management enables the creation of events by region, individual ERGs, and group subchapters with integrated calendars. It’s possible to set group level KIPs which helps in monitoring participation trends and member growth.

· On demand reporting can be achieved through gaining real time updates, total data visualization, and actionable workforce analytics through accessible graphs and efficient reporting processes.

· Online social collaboration is achieved by encouraging employee engagement and facilitate D&I conversations with public or private groups. It is possible to create segment groups so as to promote employee self-identification and deeper inclusion.

· Configurable snapshots. Build dashboards unique to each admin and ERG leader role, and customize employee views based on group membership.

· Budget and ROI tracking. Prepare financial targets, manage budget requests and approvals, and track program funds to measure the holistic business impact on your D&I investments.

· Mobile application. It simplifies the user experience and employee access to ERG event information.

1. Limitations on the research

During the research, I emailed a number of the organizations but none was able to respond. Therefore, a majority of the research that I carried out was from the internet.

Budget

This is a sample of the spreadsheet utilized at Boston College to track expenses. There is more than one affinity group at the college which have different budgets hence making it difficult to outline a specific budget using the outline. The annual report is often used to determine the annual budget for the group. Therefore, failure to submit an annual report makes it impossible to arrive at an appropriate allocation for the group. When it is not possible to allocate the appropriate budget, the group is often required to request for funding and other resources for events on a case by case basis.

Scope

The end result for this project would be better management of NEU’s affinity groups. To achieve the end results, there are several phases which will be undertaken. They include:

· An analysis of the existing way of managing NEU’s affinity groups. This will help in identifying any shortcomings and areas that need improvement.

· This will be followed by identifying other organizations which have affinity groups and have shown a level of success in their management. An example of this organization is Boston College.

· An analysis of how this organizations manage their affinity groups will be carried out to determine the reasons for their success.

· The identified areas will then be incorporated into the management of the affinity groups at NEU which will help to improve the way that they are being managed.

Monitoring and Evaluation

To enable monitoring of project of the progress, there will be reporting which is required at very stage. It would then be evaluated against the proposal of the project.

The indicator for the objectives would be identification of the successful management practices being implemented by other organizations. An indicator for the results would be implementation of these practices in NEU’s affinity groups which would subsequently lead to better management of the groups.

Recommendations:

Boston College has done a commendable job in managing their affinity groups. Their approach on annual reporting is helping the college to keep track of the activities of this groups while providing the much needed finances to plan their events. The annual report is also used to determine the appropriate budget to be allocated to the different affinity groups. This enables accountability and better utilization of the finances which have been allocated to them.

This is the approach which should be taken by Northeastern University. The budget should be set depending on the activities of the group and not a standard one. This way, the affinity groups will be encouraged to involve themselves more in activities so that they may be allocated a greater budget. This approach also enables accountability for the financial resources which have been allocated to the affinity groups.

Timeframe (I can write by myself)