That Blue Square Thing

Applied ICT A Level Unit 8 - Project Management

It's about Managing Projects you know

Project Management is about, well, managing a project. The key thing to remember is that it's more about developing your skills related to working in a team - and how you might use ICT to make that easier and more efficient - than anything else.

some slides introducing what project management means - taken from exam board literature, so it's what it means to them.

The Markgrid:

You can find the markgrid for this unit on the AQA Applied ICT homepage - scroll way down the page (psst, there are copies on the school network or, if you can't find it at AQA, then I'll e-mail it to you, but don't tell anyone I said that, OK?). It's not like the other units - the write up really doesn't follow the markgrid in the same sort of way.

Why do I need to do this?

This unit can seem a bit meh sometimes. In particular it can seem confusing because so much stuff is shared between people and the markgrid just doesn't work in the same way as other units.

I understand why it can seem meh, but I also understand why you need to do it - in fact, why it's really, really important.

Most ICT projects, including software projects, in anything other than very small organisations involve teams of people working together to try to achieve a set of goals. It's the way the industry works. If teams work well then projects work well and things get done well. If they don't then bad stuff happens.

I really think it's important to start to develop some of the skills associated with good team working (and, here's a thing: these skills get taught at uni on comp sci courses OK...). So enjoy this - it's not as complex as Flash programming or stuff like that. Just relax and do it :-)

Project Management Software:

In order to project manage you need some project management software I suppose. You need to see us to get this as it no longer seems to be available on the interwebz.

Note: only the project manager <waves> needs to use this.