Project Management Strategies

Overview

Effective project management is essential for delivering successful data projects. This section covers planning techniques, Gantt charts, and tracking progress. Lots of our focus for the project management is on tracking the progress of our SAT project and associated tasks.

Key Concepts

• Gantt Charts: Visualizing tasks and timelines.
• Milestones: Setting key goals and deadlines.
• Critical Path: Identifying the tasks which can run concurrently and which tasks will delay the whole project if they are delayed themselves. The critical path is the set of tasks which will delay the whole project if they are delayed
• Risk Management: Identifying and mitigating project risks.

Project Management in the Study Design

Unit 3 Outcome 2

Key Knowledge:

• features of project management to develop a project plan using Gantt charts, including:
  • identification of tasks
  • sequencing of tasks
  • time allocation
  • dependencies
  • milestones
  • critical path
  • monitoring and documenting the progress of projects

Key Skills:

• create, monitor and modify project plans using software

Unit 4 Outcome 1

Key Knowledge:

• techniques for recording the progress of projects, including:
  • adjustments to tasks
  • adjustments to time frames
  • annotations to project plans
  • monitoring and documenting progress using logs/journals
• techniques for assessing the effectiveness of a project plan, including:
  • reviewing the number of changes made to the project plan during the project
  • the reason changes were necessary
  • the impact of changes on the completion of the project.

Key Skills:

• monitor, modify and annotate project plans as necessary
• assess the effectiveness of the project plan

Study design key knowledge and key skills are taken verbatim from the VCE Applied Computing Study Design 2025-2028. © Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. For current versions and related content visit www.vcaa.vic.edu.au

Learning Resources

• Gantt Chart Basics

Examples

Example 1: Creating a Gantt Chart

• Create a simple Gantt chart.

Example 2: Identifying Project Risks

• List potential risks for a data visualisation project and propose mitigation strategies.

    gantt
    title SAT Project Template
    dateFormat DD/MM/YYYY
    excludes weekends, Wednesday, Friday

    section Unit 3 - Analysis
    Project Start               : milestone, a1, 01/02/2025, 1d
    Identify Research Question  : done, a2, after a1,  5d
    Create project plan         : done, a3, after a2, 2d
    Gather requirements         : active, a4, after a2, 5d 
    Analysis Complete           : milestone, after a3 a4, 1d

    section Unit 3 - Design
    System Design               : d1, 01/04/2025, 10d
    Evaluation Criteria created : d2, after d1, 5d
    Design Ideas                : d3, after d2, 4d
    Design Complete             : milestone,  dm, after d3, 0d

    section Unit 4 - Development
    Start Unit 4                : milestone, devstart, 20/07/2025, 1d
    Create Data Visualisation   : dev1, after devstart, 12d
    Testing                     : dev2, after dev1, 3d
    Finalised                   : milestone, devm, after dev2, 0d

    section Unit 4 - Evaluation
    Start Evaluation            : e1, after devm, 3d
    Generate Eval Strategy      : e2, after e1, 3d