L3 Project Management

L3 Inquiry - Summary

L3 Design Overview

Tē tōia, tē haumatia

Nothing can be achieved without a plan, workforce and way of doing things

What is project management?

Project management helps you turn your ideas and designs into a successful, high-quality outcome. It’s about planning your time, tasks, resources, and decisions so you can work with focus, adapt when things change, and deliver on what you set out to achieve.

Without a clear plan, projects often:

run out of time
become rushed and lower in quality
lose direction or scope creep
miss key features or user needs

What went wrong here?

These examples show what can happen when a project isn’t communicated clearly from the start - when the brief is vague, requirements aren’t specific, and feedback isn’t checked against agreed success criteria.

At Level 3, small misunderstandings early on can quickly turn into bigger problems later. Different people interpret the same idea in different ways, features get built based on assumptions, and by the time issues are noticed you’ve often invested a lot of time in the wrong direction.

In Digital Technologies, this can lead to:

building a solution that doesn’t match the intended purpose or audience
rework and delays caused by unclear requirements or scope creep
an outcome that functions, but doesn’t meet real user needs or expectations

Project management helps prevent this by:

clarifying the brief (purpose, audience, requirements, constraints) before building
breaking the work into milestones and sprints with clear checkpoints
testing and trialling regularly to confirm you’re still on track
using evidence (feedback, testing notes, criteria) to guide changes and decisions

A good article about The Longest Game of Telephone

Why we use Agile (not just “do it all at once”)

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.

What the Process Looks Like

Process Overview

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

Project Progression Examples

How you manage your project

Project Management Tool

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.

Trello

Project Management Set Up

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.

Task #1 - Set up your Trello Workspace and Design Board

In Trello, click the 'Create' button to set up your workspace and Design Board.

Board Title: Design
Workspace: Y13 DT or whatever your course is e.g 13 Game Design, 13DTG 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.

Task #2 - Set up your Development Board

Under your Y13 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.

Task #3 - Evidence

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.

What does a good board look like?

✅ tasks are broken into small, testable steps (not big vague chunks)

✅ each task includes a success check (how you’ll know it’s done)

✅ task order is obvious (what must happen first)

✅ work-in-progress is limited (so you finish what you start)

✅ testing/feedback tasks are included (not just “build”)

✅ risks or blockers are visible and addressed early

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