Writing a Curriculum Vita (CV)

An important aspect in personal branding is writing an impressive Curriculum Vita. This form will consist of who you are, what you have accomplished your goals your objectives. It is the first impression you make.

According to Ige (2007) a CV should only be as long as it needs to be. The content should be specific listing of education and academic background. The purpose of the CV is to give detail background and qualifications keeping in mind the requirements of the job application. There is no set method to writing a CV but the general structure to a CV would be:

·         Introduction to yourself (name and contact details)

·         Objectives for applying for the job.

·         Education ( keep in mind to always put the current education qualification first)

·         Experience (Professional Experience, Research you have done, office Positions you have held )

·         Skills you have developed.

·         Achievement.( Honors and Awards)

·         School attended exam results.

·         Involvements in school clubs/societies/activities.

·         Publications and Presentations

As indicated in University Of Kent (2014) in CV is analyzed in the following manner :

·         45% Previous related work experience

·         35% Qualifications & skills

·         25% Easy to read

·         16% Accomplishments

·         14% Spelling & grammar

·         9% Education

·         9% Intangibles: individuality/desire to succeed

·         3% Clear objective

·         2% Keywords added

·         1% Contact information

·         1% Personal experiences

·         1% Computer skills

Target You CV

As indicated in University Of Kent (2014) a CV should always be specialized according to the individual employer. Before writing the CV research about the organization and the job position and write the CV to cater to the requirements of the job application. Through this the CV has more chance of being noticed and a better first impression is made to the employer.

Cover letter

Along with CV a cover letter is also Witten to the employer. According to University of Kent (2014) this letter is what introduces you for any position that you are applying for. This letter points out to the employer the information showing that you have the qualities the job calls for it is also used to make a statement about yourself and your qualification for the job.

According to VirginiaTech (2014) cover letters should consit of the followin details

·         Explain why you are sending a resume

·         State specifically how you learned about the position or the organization

·         Convince the reader to look at your CV.

·         Call attention to elements of your background like education, leadership and experience.

·         Reflect your attitude: focusing on your personality, motivation, enthusiasm, and communication skills.

·         Provide references to any information specifically requested.

Personal Branding

Personal Branding is to market oneself to the world. As indicated by University of Wolverhampton (2013) Personal brands are the impressions, ideas and connections that we make about people or what people make about us based on factors such as choice of clothing (color, shape), body language, facial expressions, speech,  use of language and behavior especially in professional social encounters (like Job interviews/ meeting).

How to develop your personal brand

Be authentic

As indicated by PACE University (2010) before shaping your personal brand it’s important to analyze who you really are and what you really want. In order to this you can ask yourself questions such as:

·         What have I accomplished so far

·         What am I passionate about?

·         What are my goals?

As indicated in PACE University (2010) once you have analyzed yourself the following factors must be looked into:

Task	Description
Learn how to introduce yourself	In interviews often the interview may ask you to describe yourself. As stated in PACE University (2010) it’s important to know how to concisely, confidently say your name, your recent history( like school and university you studied at) and your goals, ·         Practice until you’re comfortable telling your own story.
Show your confidence	Show that you are confident in yourself and what u can do
Develop the tools of the trade	Job vacancies come with a description of the types of tool/ skills needed for it. It’s important that you develop the necessary skills needed to reach your goals
Dress for success	First impressions are important and that is made from what you wear. As indicated in PACE University (2010) a great strategy is to have one or two reliable, high-quality outfits that are appropriate for a job interview or professional event.
Build a professional online image	This is the information era and everyone is surfing the net. Therefore it’s important to make yourself present on social media networks. If you don’t exists online then to the majority of the world you don’t exist at all. Every company before hiring/ interviewing someone they would look for them online. A As stated in PACE University (2010) you must always Google yourself and make sure that photo or information of you behaving in an unprofessional manner is not there.
Ask for feedback	Find a professional you trust and ask them to evaluate your personal branding. Tell them to look through your CV and cover letters before you send them out.

Table 5: Personal Branding

According to University of Wolverhampton (2013) personal branding involves three stages:

 Stage 1: Decide what you want our personal brand to be. How you want others to see you and what you think is important for you to have for your personal information. 

Stage 2: The next stage is to check that your personal brand is working. This involves evaluating whether the outward manifestations of your brand match what you want your brand to be

Stage 3: This is identifying the things that you want to change about yourself to improve your personal brand.

Online Image

It’s important to maintain a proper online image. As mentioned before companies always surf via the internet potential employees as well as their current employees.

A few tips to maintain a good online image

·         Always Google yourself and be aware about the available information about you.

·         Become a user of LinkedIn as stated in PACE University (2010) LinkedIn is the largest professional social network, so you need to be part of it.

·         As indicated in PACE University (2010) when using Face book set your privacy to the max, delete any inappropriate photos, join groups related to your professional interests and use apps with professional potential.

·         Use proper and appropriate name for twitter accounts and other blog account that you have

·         Be cautious about what you put on social media site like face book, twitter and blogs. 

Agile Methodology

As indicated in Williams (2007) this is a collection of iterative and evolutionary methods which are based on iterative enhancement and opportunistic development processes. According to Agile methodology (2008) agile methodology as approaches are designed to respond to unpredictability in a software development project.

The Agile manifesto looks at the project from a very different aspect than the other methods. It looks at the Individuals in the project and interactions over the processes and the tolls that are used . As stated in Agilemanifesto (2014) the agile method it looks at working software without giving too much importance to comprehensive documentation. It gives more importance to customer collaboration more than the contract negotiation and finely it is more oriented on how to respond to change more than following a set plan.

The 12 principles of the agile Manifesto according to Agilemanifesto (2014):

1.      Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

2.      Always include the changing requirements. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

3.      Deliver working software frequently with a preference to the short timescale like a week/month.

4.      Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

5.      Provide a supportive environment and have motivated individuals throughout the project.

6.      Development team should have face-to-face conversation to convey information

7.      Working software is the primary measure of progress.

8.      The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely in order to have a sustainable development.

9.      Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

10.  Simplicity is essential.

11.  The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

12.  At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Agile has many methodologies. A few of them are:

·         Extreme programming

·         Crystal

·         Scrum

·         Feature driven development

Extreme Programming (XP)

As indicated in Williams (2007) this methodology is suitable for object-oriented projects where the project team consist of a dozen or fewer programmers in one location. This is based on 5 underlying values.

·         Communication: The communication value is based on the observation that most project difficulties occur because there is lack of communication. The roles involved are project manager, Coach, tracker, programmer, tester and customer.

·         Simplicity : make it simple and design and code what is in the current requirements

·         Feedback: Get customer’s feedback at the end of each iteration and external release.

·         Courage: Have courage in its actions and decision making

·         Respect: Care about project and Each other in the team.

According to Williams (2007) the documents and artifacts used in this methodology are:

·         User story cards

·         Take list

·         Customer Relationship collaboration cards

·         Customer acceptance test

·         Visible wall graph

Crystal

This is similar to the RUP. As indicated in Williams (2007) this methodology was developed to address the variability of the environment and the specific characteristics of the project. However, RUP generally starts with a plan-driven base methodology conversely in Crystal methodology doesn't give much importance to being plan-driven. Since the project and the people evolve over time, the methodology also tuned and evolved during the course of the project. The different methods used in crystal are assigned colors arranged in ascending opacity; the most agile version is Crystal Clear, followed by Crystal Yellow, Crystal Orange, and Crystal Red.

As stated in Williams (2007) all the Crystal Methods emphasize the importance of people in developing software, interaction, community, skills, talents, and communication.

Examples for crystal method

Method	Documents and artifact	Roles	Process
Crystal Clear	Release plan, schedule of reviews, informal/low-ceremony use cases, design sketches, running code, common object model, test cases, and user manual	project sponsor/customer, senior designer-programmer, and user	Incremental delivery, releases less than two to three months, automated testing, direct user involvement, two user reviews per release, and methodology-tuning
Crystal Orange	Requirements document, release plan, schedule, status reports, UI design document, inter-team specs, running code, common object model, test cases, migration code, and user manual	project sponsor, business expert, usage expert, technical facilitator, business analyst, project manager, architect, design mentor, lead designer-programmer, UI designer, reuse point, writer, and tester	Incremental delivery, releases less than three to four months, automated testing, direct user involvement, two user reviews per release, Methodology-tuning.

Table 4: Crystal methods

Source: (Williams, 2007)

Scrum

This is the most widely used method of Agile. As stated in Agilemethodology (2008) scrum emphasizes empirical feedback, team self-management, and striving to build properly tested product increments within short iterations. There 3 roles in Scrum methodology. They are Product Owner, Scrum Master and Team/Developer. 

·         Product Owner according to Williams (2007) is the person who is responsible for creating and prioritizing the Product Backlog. For example choosing what will be included in the next iteration.

·         Scrum Master according to Williams (2007) is the person who should know and reinforces the product iteration and goals and the Scrum values and practices some of the responsibilities by conducting daily Scrum Meetings and  iteration demonstrations.

·         Developer is a member of the Scrum team.

As indicated in Williams (2007) there are three main artifacts produced by the Scrum teams and all of these are openly accessible and intentionally visible to the Scrum Team members .

·         Product Backlog

·         Sprint Backlog

Sprint Burn down chart. 

The scrum process:

 

According to Williams (2007) a Sprint Planning meeting is held with the development team, management, and the Product Owner. During a Sprint, code is integrated and regression tested daily. Short, 15-minute Scrum Meetings are held daily. While others (such as managers) attend to the Sprint Meeting, only the team members and the Scrum Master can speak. Each team member answers the following questions:

·         What have you done since the last Scrum?

·         What will you do between now and the next Scrum?

·         What got in your way of doing your work?

As indicated in Williams (2007) at the end of a Sprint, a Sprint Review takes place to review progress, and demonstrate the latest version of the product to the product owner and other interested stakeholders. The cycle continues with a Sprint Planning meeting taking place to choose the features for the next Sprint.

Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM)

According to OGCIO (2014) SSADM is used for the analysis and design of computer systems. It contains an integrated set of standards and guidelines. These guidelines are Structural standards which provide structure of a project, Technique guides that defines a set of proven usable techniques along with guidelines on when and how to use them and finally Documentation standards to record the products of development activity.

According to OGCIO (2014) this method only covers the Feasibility Study Phase,System Analysis and Design Phase of the SDLC and in the Implementation Phase only the first major step  which Physical System Design is covered.

According to OGCIO (2014)  the stages in SSADM are :

·         Stage 0 : Feasibility

This is to to establish whether a proposed information system can meet the requirement sof the specified business requirements of the organization and establish the business case for the proposed information system.

·         Stage 1 :Investigation of Current Environment

This is to To understand the current environment and deliver a description of current services and to identify the problems associated with the current environment.

·         Stage 2 :Business System Options:

To propose a range of options for the required system to assist the Project Steering Committee to select the best solution out of the proposed options.

·         Stage 3 :Definition of Requirements:

Specify the processing and data requirements of the selected system.

·         Stage 4: Technical System Options

To identify and define the possible approaches implement the required system.

·         Stage 5: Logical Design

Design of the menu structure and dialogues of the required system

·         Stage 6: Physical Design

·specify the physical data and process design. This is done using the

language and features of the chosen physical environment and incorporating installation 

Rational Unified Process (RUP)

This is a software development methodology that is used worldwide by many organizations. It is considered t be a methodology that covers the entire life time of a software development project. This methodology is currently owned by IBM. They assistant many IT companies to implement this methodology to their company’s project management.

As indicated by IBM ( 2014) the RUP methodology is a disciplined approach to assign tasks and responsibilities within a development organization. Some key concepts in this are :

•  Provide each team member with easy access to a  knowledge base with guidelines.
•  Emphasizes the development and maintenance of models rather than large amount of documentation.
•  It is a guide for how to effectively use the Unified Modeling Language
•  It is a configurable process that is founded on a simple and clear process architecture that provides commonality across a family of processes

The 6 Best Practices

As indicated by IBM (2014) the RUP is based on a few approaches known as Best pratise.These describes how to effectively deploy commercially proven approaches to software development for software development teams.There are :

• Develop software iteratively
• Manage requirements
• Use component-based architectures
• Visually model software
• Verify software quality
• Control changes to software.

The RUP Model description 

As indicated by IBm (2014)the process can be described in two dimensions placed along the horizontal and vertical axis. The horizontal axis represents time and aspect of the development process or project process as it is enacted. There are:

•  Cycles
•  Phases
•  Iterations
•  Milestones

While the vertical axis represents the static aspect of the process. Using:

• Artifacts
•  Workers
•  Workflows.

 The RUP disciplines

RUP discipline	Description
Business Modeling	This is to ensure if the customers and the developers have a common understanding about the project at hand and the various targets. Its is also for the developers to get a clear understanding about the customer’s polices and to understand the problem.
Requirements	To gather the business requirements of the customers for the system and establish system boundaries.
Analysis and design	Design system addressing the requirements and establishing the system architecture.
Implementation	This is to implement the design elements.
Test	Testing the software for bugs
Deployment	Making the software available for end users
Configuration and change management	Identify configuration items and make necessary changes.
Project management	Managing the project aspects like the plan, staff and risks
Environment	Provide process and tool needed for th software development

Phases and Iterations

The RUP divides one development cycle in four consecutive phases. Each phase is concluded with a well-defined milestone.

Inception phase

Elaboration phase

Construction phase

Transition phase

Inception phase

According to IBM (2014) during the this phase :

• Business case for the system and project scope is established( like success criteria, risk assessment, and estimate of the resources needed)
• Identify all external entities with which the system will interact (actors)
• Define the nature of this interaction at a high-level.
• Identifying all use cases

Elaboration phase

According to IBM (2014) during the this phase :

• Analyze the problem domain
• Establish a sound architectural foundation
• Develop the project plan
• Eliminate the highest risk elements of the project

Construction phase

According to IBM (2014) during this phase all the system components and application features are developed and integrated into the product. Through this phase the following should be accomplished:

• The  features of the system should be thoroughly tested
• The software product integrated on the adequate platforms.
• The user manuals should be designed

Transition Phase

According to IBM (2014) during this phase transition the software product to the end user is done. This includes:

• “beta testing” to validate the new system
• parallel operation with a legacy system that it is replacing
• conversion of operational databases
• training of end-users 
• product is given to the marketing, distribution, and sales teams

Analyzed strengths and weakness of RUP

There are many strength and weakness to this methodology and some points that were discussed in class are:

Strengths:

• It’s a complete system
• Phases are simultaneous to each other which reduces time and improve utilization of resources
• Focuses on user involvement, mapping requirements throughout the project and supporting the architecture required for the solution.

Weaknesses:

• It’s a heavy weight methodology
• Cannot skip ant phases or documents
• Extensive dependency on documents can cause bottle neck
• If not applied wisely can be time consuming.

Software development methodologies

This is another main topic that we have discussed in class. Software development is simply a process or chain of actions that support inventing, improving, choosing from alternative paths or solutions in order to produce computer programs to meet users' requirements within the environmental constraints and the constraints given by the user. Throughout the years many people have come up with methods or set process that should be followed during the system development. This is done in order to create an organized environment when developing a system. The process of building the system is commonly known as the System development Life Cycle(SDLS).

According to the National Archives(2005) the SDLC is process which applies to projects that are involved in information system development. It includes phases such as Feasibility study, Requirement definition, Software designing, Implementation and unit testing, integration and testing, deployment and acceptance . This process is followed in order to ensure that all functional and user requirements, strategic goals set by the involved agencies theirs objectives are met.

The SDLC gives a very generic or vague picture of the process . During this stage of software development there are various metrologies used. These give a better understanding in how to develop a system. Some of these methodologies are:

• SSADM : Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method. 
•  RUP : Rational Unified Process
•  Agile method
•  Waterfall method
•  Iterative Model 
• Spiral Model

Research methods

There are mainly to methods of research. They are :

·         Primary Research

·         Secondary Research

Primary Research

This is used to either build a theory or test a theory and also the results may support the theory in a new context and give new knowledge regarding the field of study. This is done in many forms . So methods of doing primary research are :

·         Participant observations

·         Structured observations

·         Case study

·         Surveys

The most efficient method of conducting primary research is a Survey

Study on Surveys

Surveys are not always appropriate for every situation . Its Important to identify when a survey will be beneficial.

When is survey appropriate

·         We have a very good understanding of the needed information.

·         The need to collect info from a particular group.

·         Are confident that the same question will mean the same thing to different people. For questionnaires in a survey a reliability test should be done on a pilot group.

·         When the research require a description of a wide range of people characteristics and relationships between those characteristic.

Survey methods

·         Post

·         Face to face

·         Telephone

·         Via Internet

In order to demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of these methods two role plays were conducted in class by two groups . And through the role plays the following details were observed.

Group 01:

Conducting surveys through Telephone conversation

Weakness of using telephone method

·         Source is not reliable.

·         Can give false information.

·         They may be reluctant to give info 

·         Since its not face to face false assumptions can be made

Strengths of using telephone method

·         More chance of the informant answering the phone .

·         The feedback can be heard

·         Since its not face to face they might give more details

Conducting surveys through via the Internet.

Weakness of using the internet

·         No control over reliability

·         Limited to a particular user group

·         The response might not be unique

Strengths of using the internet

·         Can reach a wider range of people

·         Can reach a large number at once

Group 02:

Conducting surveys Face to face

Strengths of face to face surveys

·         Not just relied on verbal details but also body language.

·         Interpretation of the question is done correctly.

·         There’s a obligation to respond.

Weakness of face to face surveys

·         Reluctant to be honest

·         It’s inconvenient to participant

·         Restricted to only what at a time.

·         Data might be influenced by the interviewers opinion.

Conducting surveys through the Post

Strengths of the postal method

·         Can access to a far wide range

·         If someone shows interest to reply back then there might be accurate responses.

Weakness of the postal method

·         Takes time to reach the respondent

·         Lost in the process

·         The wrong interpretation of question.

When conducting a survey or interview the most important and difficult task is asking good questions .

The following should be considered when drafting a questionnaire.

Ask about One Thing at a Time

The question shouldn’t  contain multiple questions. This can  confuse participants or lead them to answer only part of the question. (Driscoll, 2011)

Avoid Leading Questions

Make sure that the question wont prompt the participant to respond in a particular way, which can create bias. (Driscoll, 2011)

When to Use Open and Closed Questions

There are two types of questions you can use when conducting a survey : closed and open. (Driscoll, 2011)

Closed questions

Closed questions have a choice of definite responses like yes / no .

This type of question id more easy to analyze and much more easy and fester to collect than the respondent witting the answer in their own words. (Charles Sturt University, 2014)

For this many people use the Likert scales. This is done in two ways

Type A:  A clearly graded scale of response, for example, (Charles Sturt University, 2014)

Excellent         Very good       Good   Poor     Unsuitable

Type B : Ask people to allocate their attitude on a continuum between two extreme alternatives, for example from most desirable to least desirable (Charles Sturt University, 2014):

1          2          3          4          5          6

Other scales of measurement

·         Nominal: Where the number is used as a identifier 

·         Ordinal: Rank order of winners or choice

·         Interval: performance ranking on a scale from 0 to 10

·         Ratio: Time to finish in seconds

Open-ended questions

These allow respondents to give a more lengthy answer from and the answers will be more individual. These questions are not easy to analyze and they take up more time for the respondent to reply to. This is generally used when the respondents personal opinion is needed but the answers can tend to be bias. (Charles Sturt University, 2014)

In addition to these in class were taught 3 methods of asking questions according to the way you sequence the interview.

Pyramid

 Initiate with structure questions after the interviewee is comfortable and have a good understanding then expand to broader questions.

Funnel structure

 Ask broad structured questions and then base the interview on that and ask specific questions.

Diamond

 

  

Combinations of both above. Try to understand the person .

Conducting a pilot survey

This is a very important step when conducting a survey.In this the questionnaire is tested on a sample of the population under investigation.(the full range of people who are going to be included in the final sample should be represented). You do not need to survey a large number, as one person from each category should be sufficient. (Charles Sturt University, 2014)

Project Proposal Discussions

Week six and Week seven

Project Proposal is a major component to the final submission for this module. According to the requirements of the assignment we had to analyze a organization and evaluate the problems faced within its processes. We were advised by the lecturer to target the problem statement to be upto a final year s project proposal submission.

From the beginning of the module we were advised to look into a prospective problem area. Along the course of the module I had private discussion with the lecturer and obtain feedback to where the project area was suitable and upon getting positive feedback I was processed to take a deeper look into the organization and the problem area. During the course of one week we had discussions with the lecturer in class about the problem areas that were looked into by the students and feedback was given to the perspective student along with advice and guidelines for the proposal and how to look into the problem area in a professional intake.

According to Dawson (2000) a project proposal should consist of the following:

·         A Title: This should be clear and concise.

·         Aims and objective

·         Expected outcomes/deliverables

·         Introduction / Background / overview

·         Related research

·         Research questions and hypothesis

·         Project plan

The company that I looked into was MagaNeguma Construction Equipment Company after looking into the company process what was analyzed was that the company us very much effected by inefficient resource allocation. Due to this the construction projects were not efficient planned. One main reason for this was that there is no proper method of communication of information between the sites and the head office.

Therefore I looked into how this information gap can be bridged and how the resources needed for projects can be efficiently planed.