mmickells's avatar

Project Planning

I tend to be someone who likes a plan before jumping into a project. It help keep me focused on what I’m working on. It also helps me understand what items in a project need to come first so that things remain in the correct order.

Being that I’m new at this at haven’t worked on a team I’m uncertain what a typical full project looks like from start to finish. I’m talking about more than just the coding side shown on this site.

I’m looking for something that covers from the initial design side that Adrian often puts together in something like Figma, to the coding part, the deployment, and lastly the ongoing app management and updates/upgrades.

What project plan do others use for their projects aside from just jumping right in?

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martinbean's avatar

@mmickells You can’t plan if you don’t know all of the requirements. And some times it’s impossible to know all requirements up front which is why approaches like Agile were developed.

Unfortunately there’s no one answer for this, otherwise everyone would be following that one approach. You also don’t say whether this is a project with a finite budget and timeframe, or whether it’s say, an internal project where timings and budget is fluid, which would also influence the answer.

mmickells's avatar

@martinbean

I thinking in more general terms, with full understanding each project would be different based on a multitude of variables.

I suppose I was thinking there might be at least a general base project plan that others might use to start from that would be updated to match the current project.

At least to me I would think despite each project being different most would go through a initial design phase, then a coding phase, and so forth.

martinbean's avatar

@mmickells Generalised questions only get generalise answers, I’m afraid. As with a lot of things: It Depends™. There’s no one way to plan, organise, and run a project.

jlrdw's avatar

Start with paper and pencil. Get a good idea of what the forms need to look like, at least business some like top down others left to right.

Data entry speed and efficiency it's going to be one of the most important things. And easy lookup tables, or dropdowns depending.

The rest of the coding basically for me at least falls in place depending on the type of business and the uniqueness that it needs.

I do not know what type of programming you do, but business apps, once you do two or three it's easier. But just my thoughts on it.

Edit

Of course not a requirement, but it can help if you have done what you are programming. Things like:

  • Bookkeeping
  • Accounts receivable and accounts payable
  • payroll and driver settlements (in logistics)
  • Lessons from a CPA on requirements for non profit tax reporting
  • etc

Again not required but certainly helps with knowing requirements.

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