Critical Path Analysis

Briefly used as CPA. CPA is another way of planning and managing tasks within a project, CPA allows you to monitor the project by minimising the project names under more simple steps, unlike the Gantt chart a CPA formally identifies the taks that must be completed on time for the whole project to be delivered on schedule. it also shows the tasks that can be dealyed if there are any resource problems.
For this project i have used both ways of planning the project, using a CPA is in comparison with the Gantt chart more formal and easy to view, although on first glance at using CPA the task list from the gantt chart went from about 60 to 8. This took alot of explaining to work out the reasons why the CPA had minimised all of the tasks.
With the CPA it did take alot of understanding as to the layout, as a table assisted the diagram.
Learning about the CPA process of planning has broadened my ict skills, as a CPA diagram would only be understood if studying them, i can bring this knowledge to other areas in which it may be useful.

Tuesday 21st October

Today was when we first started to use adobe photoshop to design potential frames for the story. it was a useful lesson as we could all get used the different functions that we could use when designing the final design.

After designing a frame and adding buttons, this took us quite a while and at the end we all got the chance to look at the rest of the classes work so that we could analyse the good and bad points of the frame. this really helped with the designing as I got told what i could improve from a viewers position and what the frame looks like visually.

The most useful part of the lesson was the feedback, this was so that i could then improve my frame if i designed it again.

This is my frame that I designed, it was only a sample so that we could get used to designing frames on photoshop and were able to get feedback.

The points that were made for improvement were the buttons on the top right hand side which are shaped like footballs with the text on, werent that visible and would be hard to see, the alternative option suggested was to use arrows as this would clearly label the buttons.

From the lesson and looking at the other frames people had design made me want to design a new more simple frame which could be more clear in where the buttons were.

Wednesday 15th October

As i missed yesterdays lesson i needed to catch up on the work that my other classmates did. They had started using Flash and as i have never used Flash before this would have been a useful lesson.

When starting to use photoshop i got a task sheet for flash in which i needed to make a mini clip about the weather, this was hard to use at the beginning as i needed to get confident with using the different functions that was availiable on Flash.

as i did one symbol i found it easier to do the other symbols. The task is useful as it was teaching me how to create movie clips in Flash by setting the icon at different positions and also adding keys which is what they are called to pin point certain points in the movement of the creation of movie clips.

this took quite a while to produce as i have never used Flash before, I thought this was quite a long process as i dont normally create movie clips like that. this was the program that i am going to create my product in and therefore i need to start learning the different functions.

In the next lesson we started looking

8th October

in the first lesson we were paired off and each given a section of the stages that would be included in the project, we needed to note down every possible point in the section we could that would be in the process, this would assist when we were creating our gannt chart in the next lesson. also we
In our second lesson we started to jot down all of the tasks and the processes using the sheets we did in the previous lesson to help, which will be included when we create our product, these were all important at some stage in the stages including either: Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing or Evaluation. Each of these headings will be in the Gannt chart and will assist the project.

7th October

In this lesson we looked at applying CASPER when designing frames, this application analyses the design and insures that the design is well thought out and doesnt look similar to the whole page. Therefore by using this we started to design the first of the layouts which would then be analysed and critically evaluated so that we could choose the design that we preferred the best and therefore be more suitable in the story.
For each section (letter) we looked at the ways in which the product could achieve the specific criteria and this could be done in different ways and using different multimedia. This will then help me when design my product as i could use different functions for my project.
This lesson i learnt that not it isnt that simple to jus go ahead and design the layout and alot of thought needs to be put in, in order to design and produce the best possible product.

1st October

In our first lesson we looked at previously designed frames from childrens websites, we then used adobe photoshop to design sample frames, we used an 1024 x 768 frame to start using the different features available to design the frame, i used the theme of the story we need to create in the future so that it would try and give me some inspiration to design a suitable frame in the future. i took images from the internet and edited them in adobe to complete the mock up of my example frame, i started using tools in Adobe Photoshop as i havent used this program before and this will assist me when designing the project.
Attached is the sample i created.

In the second lesson we looked at the different ways of project planning in a hard copy way, we analysed a basic calendering sheet and looked at the different ways that the different sections had been segregated, this were mostly done by creating milestones at certain points on the calender. then we dicussed how dependency on resources or availability of help can affect the way that the project runs. by looking at a gantt chart that had been created for a different project we could see that the dates are specific for each project and how as mentioned above this could change beacuse of dependancys.

Today i learnt that Producing ICT documents can have a huge affect on the way any project is run and can divise the specific tasks that need to be done, and also the date that they need to be done by.

we looked at a previous made gantt chart which would help us when designing our own for our own project.

Figure 1- The Planning cycle

We analysed the planning cycle and created a flow chart to follow the pattern of the figure.