[Year 12 IPM] U4O1 Gantt/PERT component

[Mark Kelly]

One problem I faced with the project management part of U4O1 was the 
artificiality of producing a project plan with only one resource (the 
student).  Every task had to be dependent on the one before, leading to 
a really uninspiring Gantt or PERT chart.

My solution was to get the students to produce a chart using the outcome 
itself as the project to be planned, but the student acted as the 
manager of 3 other people who actually did the work in the project.

The 3 people I invented all had good general IT skills (so anyone could 
help with a task), but each had special skills (e.g. spreadsheet design, 
documentation writing) so students needed to allocate the best person to 
the appropriate task.

Having a project team, rather than the single student, let the student 
use the 3 mythical workers to make tasks concurrent, and have 
intelligent task dependencies.

Hope that helps someone.

Mark

P.S. Having looked again at the assessment guide, it never actually 
refers to a Gantt or PERT chart.  It refers obliquely to "procedures for 
solution development" but nothing precise.

The key knowledge of the outcome does refer to "project management 
strategies for coordinating the development of a solution and output: 
identify tasks, develop timelines, determine indicators and methods to 
monitor the progress of plans"

-- 
Mark Kelly
Manager - Information Systems
McKinnon Secondary College
McKinnon Rd McKinnon 3204, Victoria Australia
Phone +613 95780844  Fax +613 95789253
http://www.mckinnonsc.vic.edu.au
IPM Lecture notes: http://vceit.com
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