The project followed a structured approached and used a project plan to set objective and milestones.

The entire project was performed using an iMac and MacBook which ran Parallels desktop to facilitate a Windows environment to use the desktop version of Power BI. I needed to use data cleaning, analysis, and visualisation skills to undertake the project. Additionally due to the type of project skills such as time management and problem solving were also required when coming up against roadblocks of the analysis and visualisations aspects.

The project overall was an interesting topic to investigate. As I tied this into my own interests and a SME owner and as an entrepreneur, I was keen to see if there were any clear differences between small businesses and their behemoth competitors. Some aspects of the investigations confirmed what I already knew – such as younger generations having lower gender pay gaps. On the other hand, I was quite surprised that SMEs did not stand out as being wildly higher or lower in gender pay gap disparity compared to large organisation sizes.

Due to choosing to output my investigation into a website, there was certain skills I needed to learn to do this. One of these was familiarising myself with Azure Active Directory to connect my Power BI account and published report with my website. I also learned a few additional skills with Power BI and Power Query in joining tables, appending data, and dealing with missing values.

I feel that I met the original objectives of my investigation. An additional activity I had planned to undertake was to publish relevant social media content for the duration of the project. Due to several factors, I was unable to undertake this aspect which is slightly disappointing. However, I could choose to utilise the account to publish my findings instead. I kept to my planned timescale, finishing one day earlier than planned.

If I was to undertake this project again or develop it further, then I would potentially incorporate my Python knowledge to undertake data analysis and visualisations. My investigation was quite extensive, and I didn’t realise upon undertaking it the level of time and commitment needed to cover all aspects. I would look to complete this project over a longer timescale or reduce the objectives.

Overall, I feel that the investigation has been successful, I have created a detailed Power BI report on the gender pay gap which showcases my skills with Power BI and data analysis.