Tē tōia, tē haumatia
Nothing can be achieved without a plan, workforce and way of doing things
Project management helps you turn your design into a successful, high-quality outcome by planning your time, tasks, and decisions.
Without a plan, projects often:
run out of time
become rushed at the end
miss key features or quality
Tasks move across the board as you make progress — this helps you stay organised and see what needs to be done next.
This example shows what can happen when a project is not clearly planned, tested, or communicated.
Without a clear plan, people interpret things differently, outcomes don’t match expectations, and the final result can be completely wrong — even if effort was put in.
In Digital Technologies, this often leads to:
building the wrong thing
wasting time fixing mistakes later
producing an outcome that doesn’t meet user needs
Project management helps prevent this by:
breaking the project into clear steps
making sure everyone understands the goal
checking that the outcome matches what is actually needed
During this project, you will use an Agile approach to manage your work.
Instead of trying to build everything at once, you will:
break your project into small, manageable parts
focus on the most important features first
build your outcome in stages (sprints)
improve your work based on testing and feedback
Each sprint builds on the last, helping you move from:
a basic working version
→ to a more complete version
→ to a polished final outcome
Agile helps you stay on track and produce a higher quality final outcome.
Its counterpart is the Waterfall model which is a more linear process.
Each stage builds on the previous one, helping you move from an idea to a finished, high-quality outcome.
You will work through 4 stages:
Design Sprint – decide what and why
Development Sprint 1 (MVP) – make it work
Development Sprint 2 (MMP) – make it look and feel right
Development Sprint 3 (MAP) – polish and refine
Each sprint will be 4 weeks long and should have specific goals that need be implemented. If features are not on track then they may need to be scrapped or revised.
At which stage do you think most mistakes happen? Why?
Design Sprint
Pitch your Idea!
Define the vision and key features
Create and refine your design
Show clearly how it will work and look
Present a clear, justified design
Goal: a design ready to build
Development | Sprint #1 - Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
Make it work
Build the core functionality
Create a working structure
Add placeholder content if needed
Test basic functionality
Focus on making the core features work before worrying about how it looks.
Goal: it works (even if it looks basic)
Development | SPRINT #2 - Minimum Marketable Product (MMP)
Make it look and feel right
Add real content and assets
Improve how it looks and feels (design and aesthetics)
Refine usability
Continue testing
Goal: it works and looks like your intended product
Development | SPRINT #3 - Minimum Awesome Product (MAP)
Make it high quality
Add extras and polish
Fix small issues
Improve details
Final testing
Goal: a finished, high-quality product
Trello is the project management tool we will use for this course. It is a simple, visual board system that helps you plan tasks, track progress, and manage each sprint clearly. Trello has been chosen because it is easy to learn, works well with an Agile approach, and makes it simple to organise your Design and Development boards. It also allows you to show clear evidence of your planning and progress through screenshots as your project develops.
In this course, you will use Trello to:
set up your Design and Development boards
organise and prioritise tasks
move tasks through each stage of the sprint
track progress over time
capture screenshots as evidence of planning and development
Good project management also includes organising your files, naming work clearly, and keeping backup versions.
You will use Trello (or another project management tool) to set up and manage your project boards.
You will create two boards:
a Design Board to plan your ideas
a Development Board to manage your build across sprints
If you have an account Log in, or sign up. If your school account is Google then you can sign up easily.
Note: if you are working in a group one of you sets this up and then shares with the other group members.
In Trello, click the 'Create' button to set up your workspace and Design Board.
Board Title: Design
Workspace: Y12 DT or whatever your course is e.g 12 Game Design, 12DTG etc
Visibility: you choose
It will then open up your Design Board.
Set up the following columns:
To Do
Doing
Done
You will use this board to explore ideas, gather feedback, and refine your final design.
Under your Y12 DT workspace clcik the 'Create new board' button. Create a second board called Development in your workspace.
It will then open up your Developement Board.
Set up the following 5 coulmns:
Backlog (To do)
Ready / Next up
Doing
Testing / Review
Done
At the start of development, you will break your work into small tasks and add them to the Backlog.
Use labels such as:
MVP
MMP
MAP
Functionality
Content
Aesthetics
Polish
At the start of each sprint, move tasks into Ready / Next up based on your priorities.
You should be actively moving your cards across the board to show your progress.
You should have 2 boards - Design and Development.
Take a screenshot of your Trello set up and add it under the Project Management section in your document.
✅ tasks are clearly named
✅ cards are moved regularly
✅ priorities are clear
✅ completed work is shown in “Done”