Karen Ahmed - ESP SAMS Task 1

Planning A Project with Excel 2025

Project Documents

Download the Sample Assessment Material Set Task Brief for Task 1

This document is part of the Sample Assessment Materials provided by Pearson

Part 1: Reading and Understanding the Set Task Brief

Make sure you understand what you're being asked to do, the different tasks that need to be included in the project and the skills and experience of your project team. This is very important!

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Part 2: Creating a Project Info Summary (Tab Sheet 1)

You will need to start with a blank Excel workbook, this video shows you how to create a project summary from the information you are given in the Set Task Brief. You can then use the data in these cells to produce your Gantt chart.

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Part 3: Creating the Gantt Chart (Tab Sheet 2)

In this video, I'll show you a different way to create a Gantt chart in Excel. I'll also show you a few tips and tricks to create a drop down list of tasks and staff members using the Project Info Summary and how to freeze a range of cells to make scrolling easier.

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Module Dependencies

The examiner will be looking at the way you organise the development of the modules in your plan. There will be modules that cannot start until other modules have been completed. For example, a module that will retrieve data from a database, such as a user interface, cannot start until after the database has been completed.

Make sure you have an understanding of what each module might involve in relation to the client's requirements.

Assigning Staff

Don't make the mistake of assigning tasks to equalise the workload. You need to assign staff members to tasks based on their skills and experience only. We don't want to see Marius, for example, doing any software tasks as he isn't qualified to do this. However, do read the staff profiles because sometimes if a member of staff has experience in software testing (even if they are a network engineer) then it would be acceptable to assign them testing tasks. Otherwise, don't do this.

Part 4: Project Costs (Tab Sheet 3)

In this video, I'll show you how to produce the Project Costs tab including how to use SUMIF to automatically calculate the total hours each member of staff has worked on the project. You also need to calculate the total cost of the solution, the annual running costs, the total additional revenue that the solution will bring and how much profit the client can expect to see after 3 years.

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Part 5: Rationale

Finally, I'll show you what information you need to include in your rationale document to achieve the maximum number of marks.