Lesson video

Hello, my name is Mrs. Holborow, and welcome to Computing.

I'm so pleased you've decided to join me for the lesson today.

In today's lesson, we're going to be looking at project briefs.

We will use project briefs to identify user requirements and evaluate the constraints of a project.

Welcome to today's lesson from the unit, using IT in project management.

This lesson is called Interpreting Project Briefs, and by the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to analyse a project brief to identify user requirements and the constraints of a project.

Shall we make a start? We will be investigating these keywords throughout today's lesson.

Let's take a look at them now.

User requirements.

User requirements, the features or outcomes the client expects from the project.

Constraints.

Constraints, things that could prevent the success of a project.

Mitigate.

Mitigate, things that can be done to prevent negative things from happening in the future.

Contingency.

Contingency, predefined actions intended to respond to potential disruptions in the future.

Look out for these keywords in today's lesson.

Today's lesson is broken down into three parts.

We'll start by analysing a project brief.

We'll then identify the user requirements.

And then we'll finish by evaluating the constraints of a project.

Let's make a start by analysing a project brief.

Over the next few lessons, you'll be looking at a project for a business called Delicious Desserts.

There are four stages to a project lifecycle, initiation, planning, execution, and evaluation.

The first stage of any project is initiation.

It is essential that you understand what a project is all about before anything else happens.

Delicious Desserts have a small, popular shop and would like to extend their service to offer online ordering and delivery.

In this instance, you will have a written project brief to analyse.

A project brief is analysed to determine what the project is about and what needs to be completed.

What does analyse mean? Maybe pause the video whilst you have a think.

To analyse means to examine something carefully and in detail in order to gain a deeper understanding or uncover new information about it.

Did you have a similar definition? What techniques can you use to identify key aspects of the brief? You could make a list of the key points as you are reading.

You could highlight key parts of the text whilst you are reading.

Let's have a look at the project brief.

Delicious Desserts is a small shop in a popular town offering a variety of desserts that include waffles, cookie dough and cheesecakes.

They close relatively early, so miss out on the evening trade.

To grow their business, they're going to offer an online ordering system.

They need to start to develop an integrated system that will maintain effective stock control and sales data to calculate any profit made in a week, a month and a year.

They intend to launch the online service in eight weeks' time and will need to advertise locally using posters.

The system they currently use consists of a spreadsheet that itemises stock in their stores, and it's updated at the end of each week after a manual stocktake.

This can result in some items running out before the order arrives the following week, having a negative impact on the business.

They want the new system to prevent this from happening.

They have a separate system that contains a daily count of dessert sold, including the price that they have been sold for, which provides a daily tally of earnings.

This is totaled at the end of each week before subtracting the cost for the week, giving an indication of profit or loss for that week.

They realise that things can be improved by calculating a daily running cost for the shop, including staff wages, utility services, like water, electric, and rent, that can be included in the selling price of the goods.

This is currently calculated from the cost of the ingredients.

They also need to remain competitive.

Overpricing of goods is not what they're aiming for, so a sensible solution needs to be arranged.

In addition to this, they want to provide an interactive service that will help an indecisive customer select a dessert that they would like to enjoy from their menu.

They have touchscreen devices at tables in the shop that could be used for this service and will need to advertise the online ordering and interactive services locally.

The team who manage the shop have basic IT skills, so are able to input data and interpret what a chart means if it is provided for them.

They also respond well to visual reminders that stock is about to run out.

Time to check your understanding.

I have a question for you.

Which of these objectives would the business like to achieve? A, grow the business.

B, remain competitive.

C, buy new premises to sell their goods.

D, provide an interactive service to help customers to choose their dessert.

Pause the video whilst you think about the objectives.

Did you spot them? Well done.

A, B and D are all objectives the business would like to achieve.

The following shows the costs of the basic ingredients that must be available daily.

So as an example, we have plain flour, 16 kilogrammes, which costs 9.

99 pounds.

And cream cheese, one kilogramme, costs 7.

50 pounds.

The following are additional ingredients, so things like ice cream, one litre costs 1.

27 pound, and cocoa powder, one kilogramme, costs 15.

65 pound.

Here are their recipes for some of their most popular desserts.

So the waffle recipe, the basic cookie dough recipe, and the cheesecake recipe.

They have some other costs, too, which they have the cost for annually, which means per year.

So staff wages cost 63,000 pounds a year.

Utility bills like water, gas, and electric cost 32,790 pounds a year.

And rent costs 12,000 pounds a year.

Their most popular desserts are strawberry cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake, chocolate fudge waffle, strawberry waffle, and triple chocolate chip cookie dough.

Okay, a check for understanding.

I'd like you to fill in the missing words.

The first stage of any project is.

It's essential that you, what the, is all about before anything else.

And the words you have to fill in the gaps are happens, understand, project and initiation.

Pause the video whilst you think about what may go into the gaps.

How did you get on? Let's have a look at the answers together.

The first stage of any project is initiation.

It's essential that you understand what the project is all about before anything else happens.

Okay, we're moving on to our first task of today's lesson, task A.

For part one, read through the project brief to familiarise yourself.

The project brief is provided as an additional resource for today's lesson.

For part two, list or highlight the key points as you are reading.

For part three, focus on the second paragraph.

What are the key points? So here's paragraph two.

To grow their business, they're going to offer an online ordering service and need support to develop an integrated system that will maintain effective stock control and sales data to calculate any profit made in a week, a month and a year.

They intend to launch the online service in eight weeks' time and will need to advertise locally using posters.

Pause the video here whilst you complete the task.

How did you get on with the task? Did you manage to read through the project brief? Well done.

Let's have a look at what Aisha's decided to do.

So here, Aisha has paragraph two.

Aisha has decided to highlight her answers.

so she's highlighted integrated system, calculate any profit made, and need to advertise locally using posters.

So Aisha's identified some key part.

Okay, so we've analysed a project brief.

Let's now move on to identify the user requirements.

User requirements are the features or outcomes the client expects from the project.

This means identifying specifically what the user wants to see as the outcomes of the project.

Take another look at the text in paragraph two.

What is the first thing that we say is a user requirement? Maybe pause the video whilst you read the paragraph again and see if you can spot it.

Did you spot it? That's right.

We've highlighted integrated system, 'cause that's the first user requirement.

The first thing that we can see the need for is an integrated system, but what does this mean? Look at the current situation to help you decide.

The current situation is that there are two separate spreadsheets for pricing and stock control.

Pricing is not fully accurate as running costs are not included.

They sometimes run out of ingredients.

The user wants the separate sheets combined, creating an integrated system.

An integrated system combines stock control and pricing spreadsheets, prevents running out of stock by using colour to indicate when stock is running low, calculates profit and loss daily, weekly and annually.

This is just one of the user's requirements.

What else does the project brief say that the client wants? Maybe pause the video and have another look at the project brief.

The user requires a digital interactive dessert selector using a tablet, two posters to advertise, A, the online ordering and delivery service, and B, the interactive dessert selector.

We have either highlighted text or a list of requirements.

Would this be an effective way of presenting your thoughts and ideas to your manager? Maybe pause the video whilst you have a think.

Just highlighted notes doesn't look very professional.

Let's have a look at an alternative.

A feasibility report.

A feasibility report is a document used in project management that assesses whether a project can be completed successfully.

It considers the following aspects, technical, legal, time, resource, and financial.

Time to check your understanding.

Let's fill in the missing words in this statement.

A, report is a, used in project management that, whether a project can be completed.

And the words provided are successfully, assess, feasibility and document.

Pause the video whilst you fill in the gaps.

How did you get on? Did you manage to fill in the gaps successfully? Well done, let's have a look at the answers.

A feasibility report is a document used in project management that assesses whether a project can be completed successfully.

Name two of the aspects that a feasibility report covers.

Pause the video whilst you have a think.

How did you get on? Did you think of any? Let's have a look at some of the answers you could have put.

So we wanted two of these, but you could have done technical, legal, time, resource, or financial.

So any two of those would've been fine.

Okay, we're moving on to the second task of today's lesson, task B.

For part one, start your feasibility report by filling in the first two sections.

So the introduction and the user requirements.

Use the template provided to start your feasibility report.

Pause the video here whilst you complete the task.

How did you get on with your feasibility report? Let's have a look at a sample answer together.

So Aisha has started hers.

So for Aisha's introduction, she's put Delicious Desserts own a small shop where they sell desserts based on waffles, cookie dough and cheesecakes.

It is a popular shop and the company are now looking to extend the business to offer online ordering and delivery services.

For user requirements, Aisha's put, one, what they want to offer customers.

So A, online ordering and delivery.

B, an interactive system for customers to help them choose a dessert.

Two, what they want for the business.

A, improve stock control and pricing systems. B, the timeframe in which the project needs to be completed.

Okay, so we're moving on to the third part of today's lesson, and you've done a fantastic job so far, so well done.

We're now going to evaluate the constraints of a project.

It's very useful to have prior awareness of things that could go wrong in a project.

By identifying these things, steps can be put in place to help prevent things going wrong.

The project could be delayed.

Incomplete analysis of the brief could lead to user requirements being misinterpreted.

Lack of required skills within the team might mean that training is required.

The technical term for things that could prevent the success of a project is constraints, such as time, resources, or technical limitations.

Constraints and the things that can be done to prevent them from happening or mitigate them can be presented in a risk assessment table.

Possible constraints for Delicious Desserts include, one, forgotten spreadsheet skills, two, illness meaning time off for the project, which would cause delay, three, changes to the project, or what the users decided that they want, four, breaking copyright law.

Let's have a look at how we could mitigate or prevent these risks.

So for forgotten spreadsheet skills, we could review spreadsheet skills before the project begins.

Illness meaning time off the project, we could have contingency or buffer time planned, so additional time in case we have any delays.

Changes to the project.

We could get client feedback early and make sure we really understand their requirements.

Four, breaking copyright law.

We could use copyright free images or take our own photographs.

Time to fill in the gaps.

The technical term for things that could, the success of a project is.

Constraints and the things that can be done to prevent them happening, them, can be presented in a, assessment table.

And the words provided are mitigate, risk, constraints and prevent.

Pause the video whilst you fill in the gaps.

How did you get on? Did you manage to fill in the gaps? Well done.

Let's have a look at the answers together.

The technical term for things that could prevent the success of the project is constraints.

Constraints and the things that can be done to prevent them happening, mitigate them, can be presented in a risk assessment table.

So what is a risk assessment table? A project's constraints need to be identified and allocated at risk level linked to the likelihood of the risk occurring.

So the likelihood can be high, medium, or low.

These are presented in a table with strategies to mitigate the risk as part of the feasibility report.

So here's an example of a risk assessment table.

We have the risk, the level of risk, and the mitigation of the risk.

The two risks we have are limited resource skills using spreadsheets.

We've identified that level of risk as medium, and the mitigation of the risk is review prior learning and access training.

The next risk is illness resulting in time off task.

The level of the risk has been identified as low, and the mitigation of the risk is to have contingency time to complete the project.

Here's another fill-in-the-gaps activity.

The first stage of any project management method is known as the, stage.

As it is important to understand what the client wants, you will initially, the project brief.

Once this has been completed, the user, and, can be identified.

These are formally presented in a, report that also includes a risk assessment table.

This table includes the identified risk, how likely it is to occur, and how to, it.

And the words provided are requirements, analyse, mitigate, initiation, constraints and feasibility.

Pause the video whilst you fill in the gaps.

How did you get on? Did you manage to fill in the gaps successfully? Well done.

Let's have a look at the answers together.

The first stage of any project management method is known as the initiation stage.

As it's important to understand what the client wants, you'll initially analyse the project brief.

Once this has been completed, the user requirements and constraints can be identified.

These are formally presented in a feasibility report that also includes a risk assessment table.

This table includes the identified risk, how likely it is to occur, and how to mitigate it.

Okay, we're moving on to our final task of today's lesson, task C.

Create a constraints table as part of your feasibility report.

So include the risk, level of risk and mitigation steps.

For part two, write your conclusion to complete this aspect of initiating a project.

Based on your feasibility report, do you think that the project should be continued? Pause the video whilst you complete the task.

How did you get on with the task? Well done.

Let's have a look at a sample answer from Aisha.

So for the first risk, Aisha's put spreadsheet skills, weak, level of risk, medium, mitigation steps, review prior learning.

The next risk, illness preventing completion of project.

Level of risk, low, mitigation, allow time to absorb this.

Third risk, client wants changes to the brief.

Level of risk, low, and the mitigation is buffer time to accommodate this.

The fourth risk is menu changes.

The level of this risk is medium, and the mitigation step is have automatic transfer of data for new recipes.

And then the final risk is using another's digital property.

The level of this risk has been put to low, and the mitigation is to create our own images or use copyright-free material.

Did you have similar risks identified? If not, maybe pause the video and go back and have a look at your table.

Aisha's now done her conclusion.

Based on the information gathered, it appears that this project is something that can be continued with.

There are some risks, but most of them are medium to low and can be managed through the life of the project.

Okay, we've come to the end of today's lesson interpreting project briefs.

Let's summarise what we've learned in this lesson.

The stages of the project lifecycle are initiation, planning, execution and evaluation.

A project briefed is analysed to determine what the project is about and what needs to be completed.

User requirements are the features or outcomes the client expects from the project.

Project constraints are factors that could limit the success of the project, such as time, resources, or technical limitations.

I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson and I hope you'll join me again soon.

Bye.