Week 2 CST 300 (5/1-5/8)

 Summary of Lecture Material:

Introduction to Project Management: 

Projects are an important part of businesses and any team. In order for a project to be an actual project it must have a timeline, an understanding of what it will cost, and an end goal. Projects are when people are working toward a specific outcome with a specified outcome. There are numerous reasons why a company will begin a project, such as new regulations or improvement on current business models, and once a project has begun the company will decide which projects will receive funds and which ones are of higher priority. Many businesses think of projects as investments and so management will select which projects can be postponed or discarded. The project manager is in charge of ensuring that a project is successful, and must work within the constraints given by the company. Project managers must be accountable which means they need to commit and to deliver on the project. It is also there job to keep everyone involved on the project accountable. The project manager is also responsible for reporting on the project to the executives of a company, and as such have the ability to make decisions. In summary, project managers have a lot of responsibility. A successful project manager will have knowledge of the business, people and workflow management skills, and strategy and leadership skill. Project managers do not need to be perfect at all skills but must be constantly improving in all of these areas in order to be a good project manager. They must be professional and maintain composure so that the group can meet its goal. Project management can be seen throughout history and has developed a lot over the years to what we know now. Project management has evolved into statistical analysis of timelines and analysis of specific activities to ensure projects are completed.  In the 1960's project management became a legitimate occupation and gained national organizations to grow project management. In the 21st century project managers are become a scarce commodity due to the lack of the skills necessary. The project management office govern project work and are typically found in dynamic companies. A project team is the group of people working on the project and often times joint teams are created which have members from two companies. Any person influenced by the project are considered project stakeholders.Project portfolio management is the management of multiple projects within a company that may or may not have similar end goals. 

The future of software Engineering: Key trends Emerging in 2024:

Software engineering is the occupation of developing software systems that operate at a high performance and will be reliable throughout it's life cycle. To be a successful software engineer a person must be efficient and aware of the cost of their software as this is what will determine if a company is successful, due to the increasing use of software, engineers are in high demand. Software engineering is a dynamic field and is constantly changing but will see huge growth because of it's ability to adapt and provide. The standards for software engineering have seen major change over the years as older standards worked in linear fashion and would provide companies with the entire program at once, however newer standards are more agile and will deliver parts of the software as they are developed and encourage collaboration between the people who are actually going to be using the software. The future of software engineering is going to include major change as the prevalence of AI continues to change the way companies view software development. AI is not going to completely remove the need for software engineers but it is going to make the lives of engineers much easier as it will take out much of the monotonous work that comes with software engineering. The demand for software engineers is also growing as the skills needed are hard to find, critical thinking and creativity are both hard talents to find in candidates. There are always going to be challenges in the industry, such as long timelines for projects, concerns for privacy, and the lack of talented engineers. Software engineering is not going anywhere and with the changes in technology more and more talented engineers are needed to help grow and advance the industry.

The Future is Faster than you Think:

No one has any idea of how quickly the world is changing and it is important to have innovation and adaptation that will keep up with it. Computational power is increased dramatically and will continue to see even more growth as described in Moore's law, computers are now powerful enough to do more calculations than the entire human race at once. This change is the driving force behind the speed of the future. Another change is time abundance, which describes that as our technology advances we have more time to focus on improving for the future, less time working on basic tasks means more time for innovation. The next change is capital abundance, there is a huge influx of capital in the world right now and there is more cash in the market right now meaning that crowdsourcing can fund many project which could not have gotten off the ground before. The next force is demonetization, the cost of bandwidth and processing power is much cheaper now than in the past, so the extra capital also goes farther which means it is easier to focus on growth rather than on funding. In the near future the entire world will be connected which will give us access to so many more brilliant minds. This leads to the next function of increased genius with more brilliant people but also with increased brain power through neural research. Increased longevity means that as we age and gain more knowledge we don't have to worry about losing that knowledge to death but instead the technology that is being worked on will increase your life which means you can continue to improve on the technology that increases life. This level of improvement just leads to more improvement which means we will constantly be improving and innovating faster for the future. 

Part 1: Effective Study Skills 

There are many ways to study for tests, and just for general knowledge, however all methods don't work for all learners. Dr. Bob Kizlik understands this and provides some basic study skills that I think would work relatively well for any person trying to study. Some of the tips he provides are obvious such as study somewhere without distractions, and getting the main idea of a reading, both of these feel like important study methods but by putting them in words he has forced me to think about whether or not I always do this. One of the items I feel that I am already good at is reviewing and revising, I always review my notes several times to ensure they are accurate and to help me get a better hold on information A second item I feel that I have a good handle on is not reading aloud to myself, I have always felt that if I am reading out loud I am just reading slower and wasting unnecessary time. A third that I feel confident about is outlining textbooks, as Dr. Kizlik recommends any time I read a paper or textbook I have a highlighter handy so that I can highlight important areas of the text for future review. I feel like I am weak in organization of work space, I tend to have cluttered workspaces that make it hard for me to find anything. Two other areas I am weak in are planning my time for examinations and the SQ3R method, I tend to work too quickly on exams and so I don't put my best work forward and I had never heard of the SQ3R method but am going to implement it in future study sessions. 

Part 2:

Part 3:

A project is a task that has a specific goal in mind, has a set timeline by which this goal needs to be achieved, and has definitive end and start dates. Most project produce something or deliver upon the goal which they set out to do. Projects differ from operations because operations are repetitive and do not have a set deadline, they are often long term and a part of daily operations for a business. There are a lot of moving parts in a project and because of that a project manager is hired to oversee all of the various parts of a project. Project managers are responsible for ensuring that deadlines are met and goals are completed, they must be leaders, time managers, human resource managers, and knowledgeable in the industry Projects are split up into different phases in order to meet the deadline set by higher ups, there are numerous useful ways to break up a project into the different phases such as a work breakdown structure, or a Gantt chart. The work breakdown structure divides a project into phases to be executed by members of the team, these phases contribute to the overall project and they often deliver something upon completion. The work breakdown structure also allows for sub projects to be stated and give the goals of those subprojects, it is a useful way to break down a project so anyone could follow along.  Gantt charts are statistical breakdowns of time needed to complete certain tasks and offer insight into how long each phase of a project should last and when new phases can be started. It keeps track of which phase must be completed for another phase to start and if two phases can be worked on at the same time. A project manager is responsible for deciding which method would be best for the breakdown of their project. If a project is not properly planned it can fail due to shortsightedness, lack of funds, or lack of precision when making decisions.  Being able to properly plan and manage a project is a valuable skill which is why project managers are in high demand. 

Part 4:

The first project I chose was Jury Lookup which was a program for the Superior Court of Monterey Bay and was used by people selected for jury duty to postpone or update their required reporting data nd by members of the court to look up people selected for jury duty They did a really good on their presentation of supplying all of the tools and services that were used in creating their successful application. One of the things that really stood out to me was that jury lookup was applicable to everyone as almost everyone will be selected for Jury duty and will have to access some kind of site to postpone or update information. Overall I though the project was good but the presentation could have given more information on the actual structure of their programming and the coding involved. I would be interested in creating a program that could benefit local government. 

The second project I chose was MBARI AUV which was a data analysis program that took data collected from their Dorado sensor and allowed for researchers to view the data in a variety of different charts, styles and graphs. The program took data collected by the sensor and would perform calculations as needed and then offer prebuilt visuals to assist the researchers in analysis. This was a super cool project and they did a very good job on their presentation, the group provided walkthroughs of how the program worked, and showed actual snippets of their code which provided an interesting insight into the inner workings of the project. I would be very excited if for my capstone project I was able to work on a data analysis project like this one. 

The third project I chose was Valor Tabletop RPG for Foundry Virtual Table Top, I do not know much about TTRPGs but this group did a great job describing how these table top games have moved to an online presence as this makes finding groups to play with much easier. Valor being a relatively new game did not have an online platform and so they set out to create one. They were able to use the skeleton program laid out by the program they chose to use for their game and create a character builder selection. The presentation was well done and provided insight into how the program worked as well as what they had to do to complete the game. Overall a very interesting project. 

Part 5:

This week I learned a lot about project management and although most of the videos provided were about managing projects with teams I found a lot of useful information about managing individual projects. For instance, laying out timelines and establishing goals are both huge parts of managing project such as the Industry Analysis paper. I also learned about peer reviews and after reading over my teammates papers I learned lots of ways to improve my own paper from parts of their papers that I liked but also parts of their paper that were not my favorite. I got an insight on the capstone project which I will complete in a couple of years and before this week I would get nervous thinking about it but now I am excited to get to participate in it. One of the most important things I learned this week was knowing my audience, when I was first writing my paper I was using lot of technical jargon some of which I din't even understand myself but after this weeks writing lab I changed my paper in order to make it more accessible to the people reading it. It was a good week and I am excited for next week.