Part 1 - Taking a personal inventory
Reading through the study skills, it was blindingly obvious the areas I need to work on. The three most representative of my character flaws are definitely The Value of A Schedule, When to Study, and How to Use Your Time. I feel like when I work, I am extremely efficient. I can produce high quality work in a relatively short amount of time. However, I have a tendency to rely on this ability to work quickly when it was entirely unnecessary. If something comes up or something takes much longer than my initial estimation, it can really masticate me in the hindquarters.
As for what I am good at, this was also easy to identify for me as my failings tend to produce these strengths in an individual. Reading, Getting the Main Ideas, and Extracting Important Details are all things that come very naturally to me. I got a 770 on the reading portion of the SATs largely due to all of these skills. I can read at roughly 600 wpm with an 80% retention rate which means that I am roughly three times faster with 30% more retention than the average reader.
Part 2 - Activity Log
Part 3 - Project Management Basics
Video 1:
This video was a good primer on what is a project, operation, and the responsibilities of a project manager. Despite working in industry for the past three years, I did not know the concrete definition of project and operation. The video also gave simple analogies to help define projects and operations. It also served as a reminder that machine generated voice is nearly always worse than a regular human being reading a script but I think this point may have been unintentional.
Video 2:
This video goes into detail about a work breakdown structure. This is different from a schedule in that the intention of this exercise is to see what needs to be done at various hierarchical levels. For example, building a smartphone can be broken down to hardware and software, the hardware can be further broken down into screen, battery, processor, etc. Each of these things have various deliverables that need to be completed until the result is the end goal and completion of the project.
Video 3:
This video provided information about Gantt charts which are bar charts showing the different work packages of a work breakdown structure with estimated times of completed and which elements are dependent on one another. Gantt charts help organize a project and help people understand which elements can be worked on in parallel.
Part 4 - Previous Capstones
3D Architectural Animation - This project seemed pretty well done for the most part. However, the presentation suffered at the end due to the jittery nature of the demo video. I am not sure if the issue was the power of the machine the render was done on or some other much more complicated problem as my knowledge of 3D graphics is limited. I think if the demo ran at a smoother frame rate, the entire presentation would have more impact. As for improvements, I think that the general idea of using a 3D render to increase donations is a good one. People are more likely to give to a specific thing rather than a nondescript line item like "renovations." However, it may further increase donations if the 3D model was interactive and people could cycle through different tiers of donation goals like kickstarter with cooler and cooler structures being possible with greater donation goals.
Steebly Collaborative Coding Environment - This is a cloud based collaborative computing environment. While I will admit this project was an ambitious undertaking, I personally do not see the value over the many web based services that do exactly the same thing that are already established in the marketplace. Secondly, the presentation itself was a little sloppy with some unnecessary breaks while things got sorted out. Not a huge deal, but still could have been avoided. I feel like it would have been worthwhile for the team to go into their specific value adds; their special sauce if you will to help differentiate themselves from an exceedingly crowded market.
PICKUP Meet and Play Mobile App - First off, this presenter definitely had the best speaking style. He was concise while inserting jokes where appropriate. It makes the things that inevitably go wrong during demos not seem like a big deal. As far as the app goes, I can see it being a viable business. We have all sorts of apps and services based around being the middle man. Tinder, Grinder, Uber, Craigslist, Ebay, and AirBnB all connect people who need each other in some capacity and as far as I know there is no current app specifically designed for pickup sports. Back in a past life when I was a tennis player, I had difficulty finding somebody to play with. I was far to good to play with a novice but I would get absolutely destroyed by even an average collegiate player. I could see myself using this app to help me find a player whose availability and skill level were a good match for me.
Part 5 - Summary
This week contained a wealth of information about agile development and how projects are actually completed. I have always been interested in the human and business side of software development so this was a particularly interesting week of course material for me. It also further delved into the importance of good study skills and keeping to a schedule which is a nice reminder for somebody like me.
No comments:
Post a Comment