Newbie to Newbie Blog Part Two

"Prior to beginning work on this interactive assignment, read Chapters 1 through 3 in Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis

 (Links to an external site.); Chapter 1, Section 1.7: O Notation in Data Structures Essentials; the Complexity Analysis (Links to an external site.) article; and the Time Complexity, Space Complexity, and the O-notation (Links to an external site.) article.

Explain to another newbie how to apply algorithmic design and data structure techniques in developing structured programs. Are some algorithms and data structure designs better than others? If so, explain why one design would be used before another design would be used. Discuss in the post how you would apply algorithmic design and data structure techniques in developing structured programs."

Wow, so, those articles about complexity are full of some really dense math-talk. Way denser than I intend to parse through for this assignment. Sorry. Here's my takeaway: Some algorithms are better than others at handling huge amounts of input data. As the amount of data grows, the differences between algorithms tends to stand out more sharply. Some algorithms will take more time, while others will take more memory capacity. The really bad ones will do both. The really good ones will do neither, but those are few and far between because they're difficult to make.

What confuses me, however, is that these concepts aren't ones that we've actually worked with throughout this course. We've learned how to implement a list, a stack, a queue, and even a tree, and we've also learned about different types of sorting and searching algorithms. But we haven't learned about designing algorithms or data structures, and I don't remember learning the definition of a "structured program," either. We supposedly learned about recursion, but despite my inability to display any recursive functionality in my code, I was still congratulated and given full marks for doing it anyway.

This makes me wonder whether I'm doing something wrong, making me unable to see my classmate's blog post, or whether the instructor didn't bother to click on the faulty link before complimenting its contents. I don't know what to think of this course anymore.

Guess it's time to more on to the final project, now.

Scrum Basics week 4 journal

 This week, you investigated job openings that asked for Scrum skills and certifications. You also explored personality types. In your journal, discuss the following:

• Did you find any jobs that might interest you? Which ones?
• Were you surprised at how many positions utilize Scrum?
• Were there any openings in your current industry?
• Are you planning to earn a Professional Scrum Master certification at the end of this course?
• Were there any surprises in your personality type? Any surprises in those of your teammates?

Your journal entry must be between 600 to 900 words.

• Did you find any jobs that might interest you? Which ones? 

The Java Developer role is interesting to me, as I hope to develop code like this, and look forward to working together with a competent Scrum development team to make a robust, useful product. Some other roles that interest me are:  

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2616470407 

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2651702167 

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2673220345 

https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/2671905658 

 

• Were you surprised at how many positions utilize Scrum? 

Not really! Scrum is a very efficient, versatile methodology, and has been gaining traction and popularity pretty quickly over the past few decades. I’m not surprised at all to find it listed in the requirements/requests for this many roles, and in fact, might expect to see it listed in even more roles if the search term “Agile” were used instead of “Scrum.” The requirements in most of these postings just ask for a familiarity with the practice of Scrum/Agile, which after this course, I’m pretty confident in saying that I meet that requirement. Now just to get all the other requirements under my belt... That’s the hard part! 

• Were there any openings in your current industry? 

That depends on how you define my “current industry” - while I work for JPMorgan Chase, which is in the banking/finance industry, my current role is that of customer/client support, and does not involve any opportunity for development of any sort. Thus, roles in the customer support industry (if there can be said to be such a thing) would not typically require Scrum, but would certainly have lots of openings otherwise. Likewise, banking/finance roles do not typically require Scrum either. But thanks to the intersection of industries, and in-house development teams, JPMC does have several openings which require and utilize Scrum. 

• Are you planning to earn a Professional Scrum Master certification at the end of this course? 

Probably not, since that’s something that would likely cost money in order to attempt. What I will probably do instead, is to take the skill certification tests available on LinkedIn and Indeed. For the amount of involvement I plan to have in my future career, that should be perfectly sufficient. Once I get some real-world application experience with Scrum, I may re-assess my interest in the Scrum Master role. If it winds up being something that interests me as a career, I may very well look into earning the professional Scrum Master certification later on in the future. 

• Were there any surprises in your personality type? Any surprises in those of your teammates? 

My own personality type always tends to come as both a surprise and an expectation – as discussed in the relevant forum this week, the introversion aspect has remained constant throughout my entire life. But the other letters tend to fluctuate as I grow and develop my outlook and personality. To be honest, I’ve never placed much stock on the Meyers-Briggs test results. While it can sometimes provide some broad strokes of perspective about a person, more often than not it tends to reflect what a person wishes were true about themselves. I’ve heard it referred to as “Astrology for people who don’t believe in Astrology.” Dividing people into specific labels tends to dehumanize them and cause them to focus more on their differences, leading to an “othering” effect of us verses them: false dichotomies (or whatever the equivalent term for 16 categories would be) do more harm than good, in my opinion. 

Peter and Damien weren’t terribly surprising either, and Saul doesn’t seem to have participated in this discussion at all. I’m not sure whether he’s still attending the class. 

Here is an additional sentence in order to meet the wordcount criterion. 

Scrum Basics week 3 journal

 This week, your team developed a Burn-Down Chart. In your journal, discuss the following:

• What went well this week?
• What challenges did you face this week?
• What can you do to improve team performance next week?
• How can you apply Scrum principles in your professional life?

Your journal entry must be between 600 to 900 words. Though APA formatting is not required, it is important to cite any resources you may have used in APA Style. Submit in Waypoint as an MS Word document.

What went well: The walkthroughs for the burn-down chart were pretty thorough, and allowed Damien to get a really good start on making the chart in Excel. Then, Peter had the bright idea to get the chart into a shared document format using OneDrive, so we could all work together on the document in real-time, without worrying about who had been the most recent one to make an updated version. The team really took the initiative this week and dove right into the assignment, before I was even really up-to-speed on what was being asked of us! 

What went not-so-well: The instructions made a huge leap from 10 tasks to 24 tasks, without clarifying where those extra 14 tasks should be coming from, or what they should be about. When we needed clarification and elaboration from our Product Owner, Dr. Parikh was again nowhere to be found. I know these assignments are just busy-work to get us some practice for how to use the concepts we’re learning, but without the context of actually having this many tasks, and how long they should be taking, it leaves much to be desired for me. 

Room for improvement: To improve team performance next week, I may try to reach out to Saul earlier in the week, since for the past two weeks he’s failed to pipe in until the very last minute. I’m also looking ahead to see what next week’s assignment is, in order to better prepare for it. From what I can see, there is no team assignment next week. So the next team assignment is in Week 5. It looks like we’ll be preparing a PowerPoint presentation together, which should be fun. To improve our performance right off the bat, I plan to start us off with a OneDrive slideshow, so we can work on it in real-time from the get-go. 

Practical uses: This question is the same as it was last week (and the week before that). Nothing about Scrum or my professional life has changed in the span of two weeks. So my answer remains the same: 

My professional life does not currently have any context for Scrum, as my current role works on a day-to-day performance to judge our metrics. We don't have any projects to implement at my current job grade. In the future, once I finish my degree and transition into a Software Development role, I anticipate that this will change, and these Scrum principles will be much more relevant. In the meantime, I can foresee these being useful in the context of my roles on staff for various conventions, using each year's convention as the scope of a single project. 

 

I noticed that the word requirement for this week’s journal has doubled in length, even though we’re still answering the same four questions as the previous two weeks. My apologies, but I couldn’t think of anything more to say.