Project Plan

A full project plan captures your schedule and division of work. What you will produce are simple tables (spreadsheets work fine), hierarchies (work breakdown structure), and timeline charts (Gantt charts).

We will do this as an exercise that serves a couple purposes. First, you may end up working in companies that use these methods and tools, so it will help you to have been exposed to them and have tried them. Next, it gives some useful structure to your early team meetings as you try to solidify your understanding of the project. Your plan (schedule) will be a starting point for the semester, and we will then follow a more iterative process.

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Before trying to schedule and assign tasks, you first must identify the tasks in the project. Do this top down, breaking the task into sub-tasks and then further each sub-task into parts. Arrange these items in a hierarchical representation. You may use an outline or a tree. Examples are in the class powerpoint on project management.

The WBS will serve to guide your team discussions and work from here on. It will give structure to your CRC cards sessions and also assist your work on the architecture diagram and first few working prototypes.

Gantt chart

From your WBS develop the starting timelines using a Gantt chart. You may use any drawing or charting tools you wish to make this.