FSP4003 Field Service Project

Module: FSP4003 Field Service Project

Semester taken: AY 2021/22 Semester 1

Lecturer: None

Tutor: None

Textbook: None

What it is about

This module is the capstone project for an honours student studying either Business Administration or Accountancy. Students will be attached to a company to work on a project determined by the company, with guidance from a professor. At the end of the module, the group will present their findings of the project to the company and the professor, in the form of a presentation and report.

Assessment components

• Final Team Report: 45%

• Presentation to the company: 25%

• Peer Review: 10%

• Learning Journal: 20%

Comments

This is a module that entirely depends on the project you get, the company that you are working with, and the professor attached to your group. For this module review, I will talk a bit about my experience, and will provide some tips and pointers for your own Field Service Project (FSP).

Forming Groups

For FSP, each group needs to have about 3 to 4 people. You are free to sign up as an individual or a pair, and the system will randomly form a group for you. Otherwise, you can form a full group with your friends and proceed with the registration.

I strongly recommend you to form a group with friends, or even people you have only met for a module. I do not recommend letting the system randomly allocate you to a group, as there is a very high chance that you will be working with people who are "undesirable". These people are often snakes or freeloaders that people have actively avoided forming a group with, and it is very likely that you will have a hard time in the project.

I started this process as early as 2 semesters ago, when I was approaching many people who I have worked with before, to see if they are willing to form a group. I was lucky to be able to form a group with classmates and a previous group mate from ES2002, a module that I took in my first semester in NUS. Having interacted them before, I knew their working styles and was easy to communicate with them.

Choosing Projects

After you have conquered the first major hurdle, it is now time to choose projects. There are two types of projects: self-sourced and via the school. There are multiple rounds for choosing projects from the school, but it also depends on the availability of the projects. For the self-sourced option, you can approach any company (usually the one you interned at before) to propose a project.

When selecting projects provided by the school, everyone in the group needs to submit their resume, along with a combined cover letter to the projects that you are interested in. The resume will have to include your CAP, and the company will be able to see it to make a decision. My group's CAP was not very high, so we had to go through 3 rounds before we finally got one. If everyone in your group has a high CAP, then you will probably get your desired project earlier. Otherwise, you may have to go through more rounds, or work on less desirable projects. There are usually sufficient number of projects for everyone, as I noticed a couple of projects that appeared in multiple rounds.

The project can be 1 or 2 semester long, and it will be indicated in the project details when selecting the projects on the FSP portal. I strongly recommend doing a 1-semester long project, as it allows you to clear the module faster, and is a good excuse to use to reduce the workload of the project. The school recommends taking a 2-semester long project, but DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR TRAP, as a 2-semester long project only looks good on them but you suffer more. You will also end up procrastinating for the first semester, or having to spend time during the holidays working on the project. For my project, we negotiated with the company to remove a component of the project and cited the short timeline as a reason (emphasising on quality over quantity).

Finally, projects can have different fields of work. While it is not officially stated, you can browse the project description to get a sense on the field of work that the project is in. In general, try to get projects that focus more on marketing, rather than those in finance, analytics or operations. Marketing-based projects tend to be easier and more straightforward, and you do not necessarily need to have someone specialising in marketing to work on the project. The other types of projects will require more work to obtain quantitative data, which can be difficult to obtain in the industry. There are some proprietary databases that NUS has a subscription to, and you can probably rely on them as part of your research (especially if your company specifically requests for it).

Project Work

After your group has been assigned a project, you will also be assigned a professor to be supervising your group. I am not sure if it is possible to self-source a professor, so you can try your luck on that one. Some professors can be rather demanding and want a lot from your project, whereas other professors do not want you to bother them at all. My group was very lucky to get the second type, as it meant a lot of autonomy on our end, and the requirements for our project was more lax.

Thereafter, you will need to set up a meeting with your professor first, then a meeting with your professor and the company representatives, which I recommend doing as soon as you get the contact information. The meeting with the professor is to set expectations, understand the module deliverables and also get a glimpse on how the company is like. The first meeting with the company representatives will be to understand the company, outline the project scope and to ask any questions that you group might have for the company. Our company had a unique requirement of wanting us to present an individual research of the company in the next meeting, to see our level of understanding of the company and to also address any misconceptions we might have.

Subsequently, the pace of the project is entirely up to you. I strongly recommend coming up with a project timeline that your group can follow, so that you can keep yourselves on track to finish the project on time. Depending on the company or the professor, you may have regular meetings set up with either the company or the professor. For our case, our professor was on an "on-demand" basis, while our company wanted to meet us about every 2 weeks. Either case, the regular meetings are to ensure that your group is on task, and your group should also set up regular internal meetings to ensure that the project is progressing smoothly.

I have heard of stories where the company is rather demanding, which is entirely possible as they see FSP as a form of cheap labour which they would want to maximise as much as possible. It is thus very important that your group outlines very clearly the scope of the project, and know your limits in terms of how much workload you are able to take on. Setting these boundaries also helps in case the company wants to pull a fast one and expand the scope of the project beyond what your group can take.

Finally, I recommend finding ways to obtain primary data for your project, as it lends a lot of credibility for your report and presentation at the end, and can be a significant boost for your grades. If your group is intending to survey NUS students, be sure to submit your request early in the semester, so that it can be sent out in time for your group to review the results obtained.

Final Presentation and Report

The final presentation is part of the graded components where the professor will sit in to listen, while the group presents the project outcomes to the company. The professor will be the one grading the presentation, but the company representatives are invited to provide their inputs.

As our group had regular meetings with the company, there were many parts of the presentation that have already been presented before. However, those smaller presentations were not counted, as the professor was not present. Hence, our group decided to leave some "ammunition" to the end, where we left out certain parts to be presented only during the final presentation. This proved to be very effective, as it retained the wow-factor for the final presentation, and allowed us to impress them even if the content had been discussed before. At the end of the presentation, the company representatives may ask some questions, which also forms part of the presentation grade.

The group is also required to submit a report, which forms another part of the project grades. As our company does not want to receive a report, we tailored our report primarily for the professor, and followed her requirements to keep the report extremely concise. As a courtesy, we also submitted the report to the company for their reference.

The other deliverables include a peer review component, which every member of the group had to rank the other members in the group. Everyone in the group ranked one another in a round-robin fashion, where each person's name will appear in rank 1, 2 and 3 once. This method allowed us to show that everyone in the group deserves an equal grade. Finally, there was also a learning journal, where you need to submit a reflection piece of at least 5 pages long. You are free to talk about what you have learnt from the project, but also ensure that everyone's "story" is consistent.

As our project was a 1-semester long project, our presentation was done during the reading week and the other deliverables was to be submitted at the end of the reading week. We also started the project about 3 weeks before the semester started, which meant that the project was about 18 weeks long.

Conclusion

Everyone's FSP experience is going to be very different from one another, and I was extremely lucky to get a good group, a good company and a good professor for the project. The company was willing to accommodate a change in scope, and the professor was extremely chill. This meant that my workload was only about that of a 4 MC module, but not everyone is equally lucky. If you are thinking of doing an internship while doing FSP, I strongly recommend you do not. The workload of FSP is uneven and can suddenly get very high towards the end when rushing for the final presentation and report. All the best for your FSP!

Other information

Assignment workload: None

Project workload: The whole module is the project.

Readings: None

Recommended if: Compulsory and only available to Business Honours students.

Rating: 4.0/5. Your experience really depends on your luck.

Expected grade: A

Actual grade: A+ (really lucky to get such a good professor)