Four people, six jobs
A team of four must clean a customer list and report on it. One person is quick at code. One is careful with checks. One is good with clients. One loves charts.
If you give the jobs out by chance, the work is slow. If you match them to strengths, it goes well.
Key words
| Word | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Skill | something a person can do well | writing a query |
| Resource | anything a task needs, such as a person, a computer or time | |
| Priority | how soon or how much a task matters | |
| SQL | a language for asking questions of data kept in tables | |
| Requirement | something the finished work must do | |
| Waterfall | a method where each stage is finished before the next starts | |
| Agile | a method where work is done in short rounds, with feedback each time | |
| Sprint | one short round of work in an agile project |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can give tasks to people by their strengths, put tasks in priority order from the requirements, and choose a method with a reason.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
This is practice
Important
The real task comes from the exam board. This lesson uses an invented organisation and its own made-up data. Your teacher tells you how the real tasks are set and what you may bring.
Worked example: a skills grid
| Person | Strengths | Best tasks |
|---|---|---|
| Asha | Careful, good at SQL and testing | Write the tests, check the fixes |
| Ben | Quick at Python and SQL | Clean the data, build the load |
| Carys | Talks well, good at design | Meet the client, draw the design |
| Dev | Likes charts, tidy writer | Make the report, write the guide |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Run it: who can do a task?
people = [{"name": "Asha", "skills": ["sql", "testing"]}, {"name": "Ben", "skills": ["python", "sql"]}, {"name": "Carys", "skills": ["design", "talking"]}]
for person in people:
if "sql" in person["skills"]:
print(person["name"], "can write SQL")Do not overload one person
Give each task to the person who is best at it. But look at the whole week too.
If Ben has ten days of work in a five day week, the plan is wrong. Move a task to somebody who has time, or share it. Write down who does each task on the plan.
Put tasks in priority order
A requirement that the client must have comes first. A task that other tasks wait for also comes early.
A common way to rank is: must (the project fails without it), should (important), could (nice to have) and won't (not this time).