Turkey Week :-)

Best week ever besides X-mas. Its a short week, there normally isn't much school work to do and you get to have a whole weekend of crazy shopping.

The lesson for the week:
System Development & Acquisition
There are few different types of ways to develop a system, which there are a few listed below:

• SDLC (System development life cycle): This is probably the longest cycle, but it is the best to develop a system that meets the users needs. This cycle can be considered as a waterfall because you can always go back to a previous stage and it flows through. There are 6 different stages to this cycle: Planning, Analysis, Logical design, physical design, implementation, and maintenance.
• JAD (Joint Application Design): It is a group meeting where everyone comes together and focuses at the task without any interruptions. Normally, developers will get a general idea on how the current system works, and the desires of the new system. This room would consist of a variety of people: the developing team who will keep the follow of the meeting and anaylis, users, managers, sponsors who provide input.
• Prototyping: Basically developing a version of the actual system and allowing users to play with the model. The developing team would receive inputs from users and modify the prototype until the end user is satisfied.

Team work

Team work: is the ability of working with others to complete a task. Anywhere you work, you constantly working in teams. Sometimes people can belong to more than one team and perform different functions for each team. Granted problems can arise, because you are working with other people. As team, these differences need to be worked out.

I have listed a few quotes from HeartQuotes (http://www.heartquotes.net/teamwork-quotes.html):

Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

A successful team beats with one heart.

Henry Ford:
Coming together is a beginning.Keeping together is progress.Working together is success.

Susan Gerke, IBM, Leadership Development:
Conflict is inevitable in a team ... in fact, to achieve synergistic solutions, a variety of ideas and approaches are needed. These are the ingredients for conflict.

You get the idea.

ERP, CRM, PMS

The general idea is to make companies more productive and efficient. Technology has gotten us to that point but sometimes it is hard to determine if the cost outweighs the benefits. Even though these ideas are great, sometimes companies are in over their heads. There are usually a great deal of problems that they run into. I have a few of them listed below:

1. Resistance to change
2. No management support
3. Not enough money in the budget
4. Unorganized and lack appropriate people
5. Bad choice in equipment

These are just the few but there are plenty more that tend to interfere with these systems.

There are pluses to these systems
1. More centralized system
2. There is more control
3. Better security
4. Less likely to have data loss
5. In the longer it will lower costs

These are just a few of the advantages and disadvantages of having these types of systems.

Group Project

You know there is this group project due in a few weeks, but I am not sure if any knows anything about it. We are suppose to be working on a case study that is suppose to be selected by the professor, but I still haven't seen anything. I am starting to get a little worried, because I hate having to much work on me for a short period of time. Especially, if it is something that I could have done with time.

Does anyone know anything about the group that will be due by the end of the month?

Search

In search of articles and books on satellite devices that helps companies control their mobile devices. Its been about 3 weeks now and I have found a good bit of articles. The next thing I have to do is find a few books with useful information. I am having a hard time finding recent books on my topic. All the books I have found are about 10 years old. Are there any ideas on where I can find books on satellite devices for asset monitoring and tracking?

Week3

I have started my research project. I managed to find a good bit of articles but I am not entirely sure if they are going to be useful. Sometime this week I will have to a library and see what I can find.

Trip in Nashville

I just got back from nashville. My company conducted a conference and I also had a trade show to attend. It certainly isn't easy studying and working. Especially, when it never seems like your off work. The trip was certainly good fun.

As far as my ITEC610 class, everything seems to be going fine. I did all the work that needed to be done but I didn't put the time or the effort as i would have liked too.