Grade 12 · Practical
Problem solving and IPO
Programming Fundamentals · about 3 min
Every program is Input → Process → Output, with Storage alongside.Grade 12 problem-solving formalises the approach that earns Paper 1 marks: understand, plan, implement incrementally, then test hard.
Key points- Understand: identify inputs, required outputs, and the processing (the tasks) between them (IPO).
- Plan: pseudocode or a flowchart, and choose structures — array for a list, WHILE NOT EOF for a file, nested FOR for a grid.
- Implement incrementally: get one part working and tested before adding the next.
- Test with normal, extreme and invalid data; debug by tracking variable values.
- IPO — Input, Process, Output planning.
- Decomposition — breaking a large problem into smaller solvable parts.
EXAM TIP
map wording to constructs — "read until end of file" → WHILE NOT EOF; "rows and columns" → nested FOR; "a list of values" → array.