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System Integration |
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Dedicated to the dissemination of System Integration information |
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Week Minus Three |
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Dates: 14.1.2007 to 20.1.2007
Sunday 14.1.2007 - 1PM and Before
As I am in full time employment most of my studying takes place at the weekend, hence the entry that covers today.
In fact it does not even cover the whole of today; it is only 1 PM now but already I have done a couple of hours work, this high level of effort will probably carry on for the next year.
I have read Chapter 1 of the first set book. The books objective is to reduce the attrition rate for projects, dissertations, and thesis by explaining the process and what you need to do to complete the work.
The first chapter is just an introduction to the process but it is already emphasising the planning of the work. In my work I see plenty of very intelligent people who will solve a problem once you give them all the information that defines the problem. They are quite capable of obtaining the information they are familiar with but not so good at obtaining the information they are not familiar with.
What I am saying is that, say, you had a racing car and it had an acceleration problem which was caused by the gear box. You could not say to these people here's a car, it has an acceleration problem, the problem is with the gear box, go and fix it.
The engineer you are asking to fix the problem is a gearbox expert, the problem is in the gearbox, but he can’t make the connection between the acceleration problem and the gear box. The problem is being defined incorrectly for him/her. You have told the gearbox engineer that it is a gear box problem but, to him/her, their is no connection between the gear box and the acceleration problem.
What is needed is someone in between the statement of the initial problem and the gear box engineer. This engineer would carry out an investigation and change the problem statement from the acceleration problem is caused by the gear box to, say (I have no knowledge of gear boxes) the third cog in the gear box drive needs to be increased in size by 0.2 inches.
The gear box engineer can now understand the problem, he couldn’t understand it initially but now you have stated a problem within his knowledge domain he can; he must increase the third cog in the gear box drive by 0.2 inches. He will now be able to go out and get all the information he needs, he can carry out an investigation and fix the problem.
I think (??) that what set book 1 is trying to emphasise is the fact that you must be able to work from the statement: -
…..here's a car, it has an acceleration problem, the problem is with the gear box, go and fix it.
i.e. you have got to work from a different problem statement from what you have been used to in the past. It is a much broader problem statement, you must understand the whole domain and be able to exactly define the direction of your investigation, i.e. be able to change the original problem statement of: -
…..here's a car, it has an acceleration problem, the problem is with the gear box, go and fix it.
Into: -
…..the third cog in the gear box drive needs to be increased in size by 0.2 inches.
Or, more likely, change the original problem statement into a series of sub problems.
Once you have changed the main problem, or dissertation objective, into a series of minor problems, or objectives, you then solve these minor problems by collecting and analysing data. The conclusion of the dissertation will amalgamate the minor problems back up to a higher level so that the original, high level, problem is solved.
Sunday 14.1.2007 - 1PM and Later
The rest of the day was spent going through set book 2 and set book 3. These books tell you what a dissertation is and how the Open University (O.U.) will mark the dissertation. I spent quite a bit of time on these two books; I feel it is essential to get the foundations in place prior to the start of the dissertation.
After going through the two books I feel a bit more confident that I know what is expected in the coming year, at least I know what is expected, whether I achieve what is expected is another matter.
Monday 15.1.2007 to Saturday 20.1.2007
I work shifts, Monday to Thursday 2PM to Midnight; during the week I went into work early, on one day, so as to have the companies database of problem reports explained to me, how I could query the database, export the results etc.
This was really worthwhile as I now have all the data I need from within my company. The only problem is obtaining data from outside the company; this is the main point of this web site, to encourage contact from people involved in System Integration from around the world and from different industries.
I have been expanding this web site for the rest of the week; I need to get lots of unique contact onto the site to get up the search engine rankings, if I can get up the rankings the number of visitors to this site should increase.
The dissertation is titled: -
An investigation into major system partitioning to help ensure system integration uses the least man hours.
For this, I need to analyse the System Integration phase of a project and find out, in broad terms, ‘how it went’, i.e. how successful it was given that the system was partitioned in one way. I then need to look at other projects, where, at design time, the system was partitioned in another manner and compare the System Integration phase to the first project and see if it is best to partition a system in one way or another.
My way of defining how System Integration ‘went’ is to look at the number of fault reports produced, loads of fault reports equal System Integration going badly and vice versa.
I will also carry out interviews with people to see how they think System Integration went.
The big problem is getting information from outside my company, I need information and comments and people from the world at large.
This is the whole point of this web site, to encourage comment from others, from different industries, different countries etc, hence this is why I have been concentrating a lot of my effort on this web site.
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