Category: Studies
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The four T’s of Business Continuity Planning
Working with process development, I have found that I draw on the lessons I learned in business continuity planning during my studies. In particular, I have found that the actions to take in response to risks, also known as the four t’s, has been particularly useful. These four are:
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Failure, learning, and company culture
I’ve had a number of posts drawing on the experiences from my bachelor studies, that I started some six years ago. I’m currently studying what will be the final module, focusing on entrepreneurship, innovation, and sustainability. This has led me to think about the differences between intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship – which can be summed up as whether you’re engaging in innovation and change within an existing business (intrapreneurship) or in a newly formed venture (entrepreneurship). In the extension of this, I’ve also been reflecting a lot about company culture.
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Defining SMART goals and objectives
When running a project, its ultimate success or failure can only be defined when measured against predefined goals and objectives. Definition of these takes place during the planning phase of the project. It is imperative that these goals be SMART. By that I mean: (more…)
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The Tuckman model and Project Management
In Project Management, we talk about the Tuckman model, also known as Tuckman’s stages of group development. Though of particular importance in project management, the stages bear some relation to most aspects of working life. I think most of us would benefit from knowing the basics of it, and how it all works. Originally proposed with four stages in 1965, the fifth stage was added in 1977. The stages are, in order: (more…)
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Defining the objectives of a project
Roughly put, we can say that all projects must deliver: (more…)
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Project Management: Three ways to look at stages
My journey towards a Bachelors degree continues, now with the OU Module M258 (IT Project and Service Management). As I continue to study the module, I will write down my thoughts on various subjects. Like with my first module, TU100, these will all be collected under a category for easy reference. This time, unsurprisingly, the category will be M258.
These days, I am making my first serious foray into the world of Project Management, as I am studying the Open University’s module M258 (IT Project and Service Management). From working with the first chapter of our assigned text book I have gleaned the following three ways to look at the stages of a (software) project:
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Sense: Referencing files from wherever you want
In Sense, you can reference a list to control what your program does. By default, the [line X from_file “file.txt”] references the Sense project folder, but it can reference one of many locations. How this works differs on Windows and Mac, but the approach is much the same.
The way you do it, as you can see in the screenshot above, is that you simply enter the path you want to reference. On Windows, that would look like this:c:\result.txt, while on Mac OS X, it would look like this:/Users/Example/Desktop/Sources/results.txt. Keep in mind that you can address any mounted share on either platform. -
Exporting Sense scripts as clear text
As part of my studies, I have been “programming” in Sense, a version of Scratch, the graphic programming environment developed at MIT. The programs developed in Sense are stored as .sb-files. Now, the problem is that these files are only readable by the program that made them (and Sense programs are apparently not readable by Scratch). The problem this poses is that I can’t be assured of being able to read the files when, at some point in the future, I might want to.
Luckily, Sense, and presumably Scratch, too, has an export facility, allowing you to export the program you’ve made to clear text. Here’s how:
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The Machine is us/ing us
As part of my studies, I came across this video. I’ve seen it before, and I’m sure many others have, too (right now, it has over one and a half million views on YouTube). Still, it poses some interesting questions, and looks at text in a different way.
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Reviewed: the Good Study Guide
As part of preparing to study at the Open University, I decided that I needed to establish some routines and generally speaking get to a point where taking an hour or three per day to study came naturally, both to me, and to my family. In order to achieve that, my first subject was the Good Study Guide. Here are my thoughts on the book:
Author: Andrew Northedge
Publisher: the Open University
Year: 2005
ISBN: 9780749259747
Length: 392 pages
Andrew Northedge has authored the second edition of the Good Study Guide, a book to help students think about how they learn, how they read and write, and how to survive in today’s world of studying.
The book is divided into twelve chapters, many of them building on skills learned in previous chapters. The first four chapters build basic understanding of study and the processes of learning, and, for anyone who has thought about how they learn previously, should be a fairly quick read, building on things you already know. Even so, except for the most advanced of learners, this first section, entitled “Studying Intelligently” should be helpful in addressing and re-addressing your thoughts on learning.
The second section, comprising the remaining eight chapters, focuses on specific skills, such as reading, writing, attributing and searching for information, to mention a few. This is achieved by starting out with a condensed version of an essay written by Richard Layard, named “The Secrets of Happiness”, which forms the basis of many of the excercises in the chapters to follow. These eight chapters, too, will be of use to most students, whether starting out, or experienced learners, as the skills covered are mostly covered in such a way as to re-focus and build upon previous knowledge. One possible exception is chapter 8, “Working with numbers and charts”, which, for anyone with more than a cursory level of knowledge of reading charts, is rehash of the very basics of these skills.
Of particular interest to me was chapters ten and eleven (“Writing the way "they" want” and “Managing the writing process“, respectively), which both built my confidence in showing me two different essays on Layard’s article, which the book asks the reader to review and improve, and challenged me to take a good, hard look at how I work with writing, and thoroughly discussed the planning aspect of writing.
While the book is divided into two major sections, and then into chapters, there are more subdivisions. Each chapter covers a large subject, and is divided into sub-fields of that subject, each of which is divided into further subdivisions. While very attentive of detail, the book still manages to tie everything together. Most subdivisions are summed up in key points, which reinforce the lesson learned.
In the introduction, Northedge makes it clear that there are many ways of attacking the subject matter of the book, and that they are all valid approaches. This is backed up throughout the book, with references to other chapters when discussing a topic that links up to topics discussed elsewhere. These references are found both in the text, and in a sidebar. Likewise, he emphasises the importance of proper attribution and referencing, and follows the OU guide to referencing to a tee, throughout the book.
I am very happy to have picked up Northedge’s worthwhile book, and would suggest it to anyone who are contemplating academic study, or wants a bit of a challenge, reading-wise.