Emphasis Competencies
#2 Increase my
understanding of programming concepts.
Self-Assessment |
Artifacts |
Where did you
create this artifact? All of the artifacts for this competency were created during course CSS
561 Programming Concepts, while I as enrolled at the
University of Phoenix. As a member of
a Learning Team we were challenged to create a 5-page (300 words per page)
Plan for software maintenance and change control in an organization. What I Learned,
How did you learn this? During the course I learned about operating system structures, overview
of computer programming, documenting, coding, executing and testing and
debugging, functions and conditional structures, looping structures and
arrays, files and program maintenance and how to serve as a quality control
and design team for the programmers. I
was able to learn these topics by conducting research on relevant topics,
performing critical analysis of researched data and as part of a research
team
documenting findings and recommendation in
an academic research paper. Why this is
important: For the IT executives and managers to be viewed as successful they
must be able to connect IT resources
(staff, hardware and software) to profitable business units projects and
goals and/or show hard and soft dollar savings in process efficiency. In general IT managers standardize on hardware, operating systems
and applications to reduce support cost. I do not foresee any application
being able to support mid-size and large corporation needs without a standard
operating system in place. With 2000+
desktops, 200+ servers, 300+ printers, and 100+ different business
application needs in an organization no one vendor would ever be able to
develop an application that would fulfill all the departmental requirements
of the organization. Any attempt to do
so would be costly to support for both the vendor and IT department. Business needs dictate application needs which dictate OS and
Hardware requirements. The vast difference
in hardware today and in the future will never be accommodating to a
successful merge of applications and operating systems. Having to support
multiple operating systems in an organization is a chore. Having to support
hundreds of application without an operating system would be a
nightmare. The HR and Accounting
Departments will have different requirements that will need to be fulfilled
and no one application will be able to provide the needs for both departments,
coexist with other applications, and support multiple hardware configurations
successfully without a standard operating system. How can you apply?
Supporting mobile devices is now part
of our IT Policy. It generates urgent
Help Desk calls and we train and staff for their support. To do this successfully we could not
possibly support every device on the market so we standardized on
Blackberry’s, Apple, Android and Palm OS
devices. The business needs of our
executives was the driving force behind this decision and if in the future a
device hits the market that fills a hole in our business requirement and can
be implemented and supported in a cost effective manner, I will recommend and
support it. I always prefer not to but
all my eggs in one basket but we want practical applications that work
consistently. I would expect that
regardless of vendor any hugely successful mainstream application will be
dependent on the dominant OS of the times. What challenges
& obstacles did you overcome? Working in a team dynamic posed the following challenges for me as a individual: 1. Team Procrastination, Not getting
drafts done early enough for team review and discussion. 2. Lack of Communication, will team
members communicate effectively, not hearing from people and us coming up to
deadlines. Communication Methods; keeping up with post 3. Work/Home schedules, time
differences/constraints for distance education students. In order to overcome the above
challenges we were able to reach a consensus on our team charter and project
plan and completed our project on time.
One key to our success was establishing Ground Rules on meeting
schedule, locations, attendance expectations, agenda, assignment completion, and
communication methods. We used the
following set of rules to keep the team functioning and producing at a high
level: 1. Members will post project status
2-3 times a week to B Team News Group; Team Leaders will Provide Daily
updates to the status report thread. 2. Team News Group will be our primary
source of communication. 3. If Team decides to have a
teleconference or a meeting using a chat program, everyone will attend and be
on time. 4. For final paper, Team B will be
establishing a thesis, outline and reference list. From the outline, the team will select
which aspects of the paper will be assigned to which individuals. 5. The team will agree on a date when
members will turn in their piece of the report. The team leader will combine everyone’s
inputs and post the draft report in the team’s newsgroup where each team
member will edit the draft. Draft will be in approved APA format to include
an abstract and references. 6. Once the team is satisfied with the
final report, the team leader will post it to the appropriate newsgroup. 7. Team Leadership role will rotate
weekly among team members. The team also addressed Conflict
Management by discussing as a team what are potential conflicts that might
arise among or between team members during this course and how will team
members deal with these and other conflicts.
Our conflict management plan stated that on disagreement on analysis
of research topics and/or presentation material, an open team discussion on
opposing viewpoints will occur, team members will vote on a resolution,
member will abide by majority rule vote, tie breaker goes to faculty to
facilitate. Per University of Phoenix faculty policy members have option to
submit separate assignment in conjunction with team assignment. 100 percent
effort will be given toward presenting a team solution. Overall I enjoyed working on the team
and I look forward to an opportunity to participate in similar projects. |
·
RESEARCH PAPER: Software Maintenance Plan. ·
DISCUSSION:
Does the division of computer software into operating systems and applications
make sense for today? Does the division make sense for the future? |