Project Management and the Design Process
The project life cycle
Every Applied IT project can be described as a sequence: initiation (define the problem and scope), planning (tasks, timeline, resources, budget), execution, monitoring and control, and closure (handover, evaluation, review). Know the documents that anchor each stage: the project brief or statement of scope, the work breakdown structure, the Gantt chart, the risk register, and the client sign-off. Candidates should be able to distinguish a milestone (a zero-duration checkpoint) from a task (work that consumes time and effort), and a dependency (a task that cannot start until another finishes) from a constraint (a fixed date, budget or resource).
Design process
A defensible design process runs: identify the need, research, generate and compare options, produce a design proposal, prototype, test against criteria, iterate, then implement and evaluate. Requirements should be written as testable criteria, not vague wishes, and evaluation must refer back to the original brief.
Traps in questions
- Confusing the critical path (the longest dependent sequence, which sets the minimum project duration) with the most expensive or most difficult task.
- Treating evaluation as something done only at the end; it is continuous and feeds iteration.
- Naming a tool (Gantt chart) when the question asks about the purpose (communicating schedule and dependencies).
- Forgetting change control: any scope change should be documented, assessed for time and cost impact, and approved before work continues.
Worked rule of thumb
If a task on the critical path slips by three days, the project finish date slips by three days unless the team crashes or fast-tracks later tasks. A slip on a non-critical task only matters if it consumes that task's float (slack). So always calculate float before predicting delay: float = latest start minus earliest start.
Collaboration and documentation
Version control, meeting minutes, action logs and clear file-naming conventions are project-management evidence. Examiners reward answers that show who is responsible, what the deliverable is, and how success will be measured.