Category: Studies

  • Anything worth doing…

    …is worth doing poorly. Yes, you read that correctly. Here’s what I mean by that: It is better to do something poorly, than not to do it at all. Here is one example from my own experience: Years ago, as I was working my way through my Bachelor’s degree, I got an assignment that I…

  • 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: Treat Transform Tolerate Terminate Under treat,…

  • 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…

  • 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: Specific Measurable Achievable Relevant Time constrained Hughes and Cottrell write (2009):…

  • 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…

  • Defining the objectives of a project

    Roughly put, we can say that all projects must deliver: The agreed product or objective… At the agreed level of quality… On time and… Within budget. (Adapted from Hughes and Cottrell, 2009, p. 14)   These are known as the project objectives of a project, as opposed to its business objectives, which deal with the…

  • 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…

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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.

  • 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…