Reflective consolidation

Reflective Consolidation Paper
Firstname, Lastname
University name
Reflective Consolidation Paper
As I am nearing the completion of this course, I feel ready to be in a position to reflect on the course.
My Course Learning
The biggest contribution this course would always have on my journey to becoming a software specialist would be that it taught me to think like a software engineer. It has given me the eyes to analyze problems around me and the mind to design the solution. It has taught me the basic steps required to create effective, productive, maintainable and successful software systems. No matter where I am a decade from now, I know I will constantly be revisiting the conceptual knowledge I learnt in this course. The course has triggered in me a fascination for software systems. It has polished for me my goal in future and has directed me towards it. And now I am anxiously looking forward to learning more about software analysis and design in future.
My Future Goals
I want to become an IT expert. In the present age, computers, laptops, smartphones and Internet have become a commodity of the global society. Since this trend will continue to rise, IT experts have a sound financial future in the International professional market (Thompson, 2016). They also have the ability to affect people on a massive scale (Sinha, Ogilvy, and Shanghai, 2005). IT personnel can make a difference in the world by using technology to aid people’s daily lives. I want to improve people’s lives through designing software systems that people can easily relate to and adopt and which make their daily chores easy for them.

This course gave me an opportunity to move towards my eventual goal.
Course Challenges
The course touched all the major topics that are believed to be important in mainstream software development courses (Kendall and Kendall, 2014). Since, I am good at reading and concentrating, the theoretical concepts such as the process cycles, information gathering techniques, prototyping, interface designing, etc. were easy to grasp. Reading the textbook and online sources twice and thrice was enough for me to be able to explain a concept if asked. The tricky part of the course was applying the modeling part in real-world scenarios; the Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Sequential Diagrams, State-Flow Diagram, ERD, Work Breakdown Structure, etc. Extra care was involved as one diagram depended on the other. For instance, getting the entities, their relationships, and cardinalities correct was highly dependent on getting the actors in the Use Case Diagram. The accuracy of the Class Diagram was dependent on the ERD designed.
My Preferred Topics
Although I consider it the most challenging part of the course, yet it was still the modeling portion I particularly liked in the course. This is because the theoretical concepts learnt could be applied to the actual scenario. Analyzing the requirements to extract the use cases was the hardest and most involving part. And we got to work in teams to create the data flow diagrams, work flow diagrams, etc. This was a good social and learning experience. Owing to the challenging nature of the task, the sense of accomplishment I felt, after having modeled a diagram that fulfilled all the requirements it was meant to, was exhilarating. Tackling real-world scenarios boosted my confidence to the extent that now I believe I can analyze and design an enterprise system independently.
Course Practical Lessons
I always I could produce better results when I worked alone. One of the activities of the course was to work in teams to create the UML diagrams. The teams were changed every week so, we got to partner with different students. Although the idea of collaborating with a group of unfamiliar people every week was intimidating, and I was worried how I will fit in, it turned out to be a good exercise to polish my teamwork skills. I learnt to listen, share, discuss and agree with my team mates on different assumptions while designing the models. I realized how easy it is to produce accurate results when working in teams. Another requirement was to draw the models in the widely used Microsoft Visio software. Before this course, I had no hands-on experience with the tool. I thought learning Visio would require a lot of effort. But owing to the huge volume of visual help available online, I was able to catch up with the tool rather easily.
Application to Situations in Life
The course experience has somewhat resided within me. I have thought of a few apps to help myself with trivial tasks such as note/record keeping, fitness tracking, etc. that I plan to design and develop when I have time in future. By designing the work breakdown structure, I have learnt to divide big tasks into small manageable tasks such as managing an event or a simple task as getting a list of things from the market. Furthermore, working in teams has helped me improve my teamwork skills. These teamwork skills will help me in future when I’ll be working on big software projects.
Noticeable Self Changes
Before taking the course, I did not give much thought to general happenings in life such as a driver missing out on seeing a traffic/road sign, maintaining paper-based record of daily revenues, searching through an entire collection of notes looking for a recipe that you wrote, etc. I saw these things happening around me but paid no attention to them. Now my mind identifies events as problems, and it starts to think of ideas how a software system can fix them. The course has given me an analytic mind. Now that I have acquired the skillsets of software analysis and design, I feel more confident in the role of the software developer. I feel well equipped to design a software for a real life problem on my own. The course has changed the way I think in general. Even when I’m watching a movie, and I see a paper-based or outdated system that is giving a hard time to its users, my mind instantly starts to think of how an effective software system can ease their job. I have a smart phone in my personal use. After taking the course, I have often found myself thinking critically regarding the interface of certain apps on my phone. In my head, I am thinking about alternatives to the provided design, which I believe would be more user-friendly. Working in teams boosts a person’s productivity (Lau, 2013). Now I agree with this idea without any hesitation.
My Student Interactions
In the last month or so, to formulate the data flow diagrams, etc. for different real world scenarios, we were grouped into teams. Since the members of each team were swapped every week, I got to work and interact with new students each time. I would put my views on the table, discuss my point of view on the problem at hand, and after convincing others or myself on a common solution, I would help finalize the model. As a result of this correspondence, my acquaintance with many of my peers grew more informal even outside the classroom. The bonds I created in this course were also helpful in joining heads even in other courses as well.
My Strategy to Overcome Weaknesses
The modeling portion of the course seemed somewhat daunting to me. So I researched those topics online. I read whatever literature I found on the topics. I practiced and re-practiced the diagrams till I thought I got them right. I was never fully confident. Later on, during the team meetings, I would share, discuss and confirm my understanding of the concept. This motivation of working in teams helped me to open up and put my ideas on the table, which otherwise I would never have done so. The advantage of this was that at times, the peers on the table corrected my understanding of a concept and at times while convincing them of a point, my concepts would become crystal clear. Working in groups boosted my confidence.
My Recommended Changes
The software analysis and design textbook by Kendall and Kendall (2014) were the perfect choice for the course. The topics were easy to understand and follow in the selected book. The software design exercises that we completed while working in teams were enjoyable as well as a multi-faceted learning experience. Each week a group of students with different mindsets would work together and collectively come up with the different software diagrams after consulting with each other, convincing and agreeing on a common set of assumptions. I would recommend to continue with the current setting of the course which promises a highly engaging and learning package.
References
Kendall, K. & Kendall, J. (2014). Systems Analysis and Design, 9th Ed., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.  978-0133023442
Lau, E. (2013). ‘Why and where is teamwork important?’. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2013/01/23/why-and-where-is-teamwork-important/#27a7572a32d9Sinha, K., Ogilvy & Shanghai, M. (2005). The Future of Technology and its Impact on Our Lives. WPP. Retrieved from http://www.wpp.com/wpp/marketing/digital/the-future-of-technology/Thompson, C. (2016). “8 jobs every company will be hiring for by 2020”. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/8-jobs-every-company-will-be-hiring-for-by-2020/