CST - 300 Week 2

Part 1: Review and Reflect Learning Strategy

    After reading "Effective Study Skills" by Dr. Kizlik, I learned I do a few things well in school as well as a few things not so well. First thing I think I do well is schedule my time. I believe I set my schedule well at the beginning of the week when assignments are posted. I will prioritize my schedule based off of the due date and difficulty of the assignment. Because of this, I can usually finish assignments ahead of time, and I can use extra time to study if needed. Another area I feel like I do well in is outlining my essays. I like to outline my papers before I write even if it is not required. I believe I can keep my ideas organized better, and I am able to pre-write my papers more effectively because of the outline. Lastly, when I study, I effectively use "reciting" to help me retain information. I think this small step has a significant impact on how effective my study time is. This is something I have done my whole life in school.

    One of the things I think I could do better is choosing where to study. Due to a lack of options, I often find myself studying in loud places. I feel like I have been desensitized to distracting environments, but I think I could study more effectively if I studied in a quiet room. I also should avoid reading out loud to myself when I study. I only do this when I am reading something dense, but I did not know that reading out loud could hinder my studies. Lastly, I am terrible at taking notes in lectures. I almost never use my lecture notes because they are unreadable or incomplete. I struggle with listening and processing information quickly enough to take notes. I think I am much more of a visual learner than any other method.

Part 2: Time Management Skills

Part 3: Project Management Basics

    A Project is a temporary means to accomplish some sort of goal like producing a product or providing some service. Each project is a complex initiative that must be assessed by scope, time, and cost (the triple constraint). Projects are generally a part of a strategy for a business to solve some sort of need such as market needs or the requirement to advance its technology. Projects begin with proposals, and then are prioritized amongst each other in order to decide which projects are executed and what order they occur in. Project Management involves the analysis of needs and resources to ensure projects are completed efficiently. Once the board of directors of a business accepts a project, a project manager is put in charge of completing the project. It is part of the project manager's duty to monitor the progress and the triple constraints. As the leader, project managers are accountable for all aspects of the project and must make decisions in the project. Project managers will build skills such as project management and business skills, people and workflow management skills, and strategy and leadership skills over time as they work on the project. In addition to these skills, a project manager must possess leadership qualities to ensure workers are motivated and moral is high.Project management has been a part of society for thousands of years. In the 20th century, project management became more advanced during the first world war. Today, project management is a complex task that requires a high degree of skill, given the high speed, technologically driven state of society.

    

    A work breakdown structure (WBS) is a leadership and communication tool used to complete a project. A WBS can be visualized as a tree with nodes called deliverables. Each node can be a product, capability, result or some other type of intangible aspect of the project that needs to be done. The root node exists at level 0 and this is the project itself. Level 1 or the key-line consists of categories that deliverables can be divided into. Nodes at level 1 point to level 0 and could be major principles. Level 2 consists of the major deliverables that fall into each category, and these could be the end objectives of the project. Level 3 are the sub deliverables or interim deliverables that fall under each major deliverable. Interim deliverables could be prototypes or components that are not yet fully integrated into end deliverables. Levels below level 3 are deliverables that need to be further decomposed until it is broken down to a basic unique task. Proper organization of the WBS involves numbering each step, which allows the work to be presented as a tree diagram or a list. Ensure each node of the tree is properly labeled and described. Also ensure nodes and the tasks that belong to it do not overlap with other nodes. To create a WBS, start by creating work packages to find what deliverables need to be created together. Once this is accomplished, aspects such as the activities, sequence of events, and estimates involved in completing the deliverable can be planned. Determining these aspects will then allow a schedule to be drawn to complete the project.

    The Gantt Chart is a project planning tool named after Henry Gantt. On this chart, time is represented on the X axis and activities on the Y axis on a graph. Tasks then can be put on this chart as horizontal bars. This graph creates a readable representation of the amount of time it takes to complete tasks and the order that tasks must be accomplished in. When drawing a Gantt Chart, ensure items are properly marked and labeled in a key to help viewers of the chart understand the planning of the project.

Part 4: Check Out Previous Capstones

    Open Energy Dashboard is a website application to help organizations see how much energy and resources they use. This is intended to address issues with climate change and to provide an education on these issues.The thing that stood out the most to me was the quality of the video and how professional it looked. Considering I do not know much about the work that went into the project, I thought it was explained well enough so that the average person could follow along with their presentation. I also like that this group explained how they divided labor in this project and how they communicated. I feel like this will be helpful whenever our group gets this project. Overall, I think this video provided good insight into the development of the project.

    Town-Hub allows members of a community to organize events, especially in small communities. This app provides a platform for smaller groups to host events easier without being overshadowed on larger social network platforms. I think this group explained the challenges they faced well like uploading images. They also explained how they overcame these challenges well too. I enjoyed seeing how this app is used, and I thought that the tutorial explained many of its features well. I also enjoyed this concept and its uniqueness. As someone who lives in a large city, this app shed light on some issues people from smaller towns face that I did not know about.

    The cyber security group worked with the US Naval Research Laboratory to identify vulnerabilities in code and made this information from their assessment available in a readable format. I think making this kind of information accessible to everyone including people without a technical background could provide great benefits to an organization. I thought the demo of their project did a great job of showing how difficult it could be to interpret data for any person regardless of their technical background. The visual representation of the SARIF report uses appealing graphics to make information much more digest-able. I also think that it is impressive that during this class, some groups are able to create high quality work that can be used by federal agencies. I also thought this group was able to answer questions well like what SARIF files were. I did not know what this was, and I left this presentation more knowledgeable than before.

Part 5: Summarize this week (Includes summary of required Module 2 Lecture)

    During this week, I was introduced to some of the concepts in software engineering that go beyond solving programming problems. Seeing the "big picture" behind software development was sort of an eye opener to all the things I will have to learn in the coming years. 

    I also gained some valuable knowledge while drafting my industry analysis essay. This gave me the opportunity to talk to some of my friends currently working as software engineers in the industry and this provided me a better understanding of what developers do in this field. I also learned a lot from the research I did on my own. Overall, I was not expecting to do this much research this week, but I was able to learn a lot when I was not really expecting to.

 "The Future is faster than you think"

    Peter Diamandis discusses how technological advancement is occurring rapidly. There are many factors as to why the world is developing much faster than it was in the past. Computational power has increased drastically and has also become much cheaper. The increased availability of technological power is driving business models today. The improvement in technology has decreased the amount of time it takes to do tasks, and this allows for more time and energy to put into innovation and productivity. Additionally the availability of capital has allowed massive investments to be put into areas of technology, which has resulted in the increased growth in this field. Technological advancements, like the internet, have allowed for better communication across all parts of the world. Better communication has improved the ability of people to collaborate and this has been a major factor in today's technological advancement. These innovations lead Diamandis to claim that people are currently living in "the most amazing time" to live in human history.

"Trends in Computing and Software Development"

    Software engineering is software development with the application of engineering principles to create safe and effective software systems. The engineering and project based approach to software has become more common throughout the industry. Software engineering practices and methodologies have improved and will continue to evolve alongside with the needs of society. Today's standards are governed by challenges that are faced today in software engineering such as time-to-market, technical debt, privacy concerns, and talent shortage. While these issues present obstacles to developers today, newer innovations like low-code development, AI, digital immunity and resistance, and cloud computing, are key components in the revolution of software. In the coming years, it is impossible to predict with absolute certainty that software developers will be needed, but with society's constantly evolving technologies, it appears that software developers will be in high demand. Lastly, AI will most likely change and improve the way developers work, but it will not erase the need for qualified developers.

"Introduction to Project Management"

    Discussed above in paragraph 1 of part 3.