Dave Inman

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Project Planning

• Dave Inman

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Planning

• Plan at the start!
• The plan
• Objectives
• Milestones - work breakdown
• Estimate times
• Sequencing
• Rolling Wave
• Activity network
• Gantt chart
• How will you plan your project?

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Objectives

• What is your project about?
• What will you produce?
• Code?
• Research synthesis?
• What questions are you answering?

Answer these questions for your project
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Tasks

• What must you do to complete the project?
• What are the most important tasks?
• How long will they take?
• When must you do them by?
• What order must you do them in?
• How do you represent the tasks, and their
  relationships?

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An example task

• Task ID G
• Title Test prototype 1
• Minimum Duration 1 day
• Likely Duration 1 week
• Maximum Duration 2 weeks
• Depends on F (Build prototype 1)

Write down a few example tasks for your project
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An example diagram - Rolling Wave plan
Top Level BIT project
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Example diagram - more detail
BIT project
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Network Analysis
Events
Earliest start
Duration
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Critical Path Method

• A procedure for using network analysis to
  identify those tasks which are on the critical
  path
• Any delay in the completion of these tasks will
  lengthen the project timescale
• For all tasks off the critical path, a degree of
  tolerance is possible (eg late start, late
  completion, early start, etc.).
• Software is available which requires the user
  only to enter the tasks, duration of each task
  and dependencies upon other tasks

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Gantt charts

• Gantt charts like rolling wave charts but
  dependencies shown as well
• Dependent tasks shown under each other with a
  link
• Easier to see simultaneous activities than
  activity chart
• Harder to see dependencies

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Major activities CS
What are the major activities of a CS project?

• Plan
• Research
• Design
• Build
• Test
• Refine
• Report

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Major activities BIT
What are the major activities of a BIT project?

• Plan
• Research
• Synthesis
• Data collection
• Analyse data
• Summary and evaluation
• Report

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Refining your plan

• Any plan is an estimate
• As you work on your project you can refine these
  estimates
• This may cause you to re-think how you will
  finish your project
• Refine your plan at the start of each term
• Dont spend all your time planning!

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Some tips

• Software does not make you a project manager
• Dont get carried away with appearance and
  refining a chart at the expense of fundamentals.
• Be conscious of your own bias
• Are you optimistic? Pessimistic? Do you allow for
  problems?
• Be very wary when dealing with innovation
• If you project has lots of innovation try to
  allow escape routes if all does not work out as
  planned

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Conclusions

• You must include a plan in your report
• Decide your objectives and tasks to achieve them
• Break tasks down into manageable units
• Decide on durations and sequence
• Draw the tasks in a way to show dependencies and
  durations
• Planning is an iterative process

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References

• Some sections taken from
• Guidelines for Multimedia Courseware Developers
  in Higher Education http//ibis.nott.ac.uk/guideli
  nes/ch8/chap8.html by
• Peter Davies, Tim Brailsford, University of
  Nottingham and
• Richard McCracken , Rights Manager, The Open
  University
• Stephen Rickard Multimedia Development,
  McGraw-Hill Book Co., Europe