Learning Resources
Lesson
The development plan is an advanced planning exercise prior to commencing any development work. It is important to think of it as a draft, since you will most likely have to modify parts of it as you develop the solution. In general terms, however, it will give you an excellent sense of what you need to do, how long it will take to do it, and what you should have accomplished at specified stages in the process.
There are a number of ways to approach project planning. Project planning software uses a couple of standard techniques.
- Activities, project components, and key events are placed on a timeline
- Steps in a process (tasks) are assessed to determine of one step depends on other steps. The sequence is then arranged in the order that is required to make it work
- Resources are identified for each part of the process. Resources include people, money, tools and equipment, places, and times available. Then the process is checked to see if there are resource conflicts, for example if a person is required to do one task, that person is not available to do another task at the same time
Your development plan has to account for all the components that are part of the solution. Since this is a communications project, you are expected to produce a solution to the design problem with content in the following forms
- web site (web with an index file and additional pages)
- web content that includes digital multimedia
- a print component that relates in some way to the web site (for example a brochure or users guide)
For the total project, your plan needs to identify
- major phases on a timeline
- key milestones (key events on the timeline)
For each phase, your plan needs to identify
- the purpose
- the sequence for doing the tasks
- how much time required to do each task
- tools and skills needed for each task
Sample Plan
The sample plan below shows how you could develop a plan for your project. It is incomplete.
Example Solution Idea
Develop a promotional plan to involve all students in supporting the school's volleyball team
Example Development Plan
Major Phases Plan
- Phase 1 Plan Content
- Assess student attitudes
- Identify key requirements to motivate students
- Create key messages and promotional ideas
- Phase 2 Plan Structures
- Plan web site navigation structure
- Plan multimedia components
- Plan print materials
- Phase 3 Develop Content
- Develop Web structure with navigation
- Develop Multimedia components
- Populate the web site with content
- Develop and publish print materials
- Phase 4 Field Test Solution
- Perform audience testing
Phase 1 Plan
- Purpose. This phase will determine why students do not support the team and what it would take for them to change their mind, giving the information to create an effective means of giving students a reason to change attitudes.
- Task Sequence.
- Assess attitudes.
- determine questions to ask concerning why they do not support the team and what would be required for them to support the team
- determine how to ask questions
- identify who to ask and how many
- ask questions
- Identify key requirements to motivate students
- determine what you have learned from the survey
- Create key messages and promotional ideas
- engage in an ideation activity to create the key messages you want to use to persuade students the team is worth supporting, that they will benefit from it and so on.
- engage in an ideation activity to identify promotional strategies to get the message out. These strategies will be used to plan the multimedia and web site and the print materials
- Assess attitudes.
- Timeline.
- Assess attitudes.
- two classes to develop questions,
- 1 week outside class time to conduct survey
- Identify key requirements.
- two classes to assess results of survey
- Create key messages
- two classes
- Assess attitudes.
- Tools and skills.
- writing tools to create questions
- Spreadsheet to create tabulating and scoring tool (alternately a database can be made using FrontPage and put on the school web site where students can enter the responses directly)
- flipcharts or white boards to engage in brainstorming or other ideation method (alternately this can be done through the web if you are working with people in other locations)
Activity
This activity will not use the solution plan table that is already in the template, so you will need to delete it as described below.
Activity
Actions you need to take
Open the design portfolio page designstage3/ds3-part1.htm.
Develop the plan for the major phases of developing the solution
Record your plan for the major phases
Develop the plan for each phase
Enter the plan for Phase 1 below the heading
Repeat the process for each phase in your plan
Publish your portfolio
Publish your portfolio to your design portfolio web site. Notify your teacher.