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System Integration |
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Dedicated to the dissemination of System Integration information |
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My Dissertation - Third Week of Study |
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Dates: 16.2.2007 to 22.2.2007
The past week started with a search of recent journal and conference papers so as to have a set of literature that covered the current state of the dissertation subject area. I have, in the past few weeks, found a lot of literature that covered the state of the subject from some years ago but nothing really current.
One of the first things the dissertation must do is describe the ‘current state of play’ in the subject area; you must also ensure that you are not covering the same ground as others, hence the need to describe the current situation.
After that I started to put a detailed plan together. The amount of things you need to take in as part of the plan can be quite overwhelming so I broke the plan down into subject areas and created mind maps for each area. A lot of the information for the mind maps came from the cause\effect diagrams but I used the mind maps exercise as an excuse to redefine the tasks, tidy them up, organise them a bit more.
You have a lot of information, and tasks, to co-ordinate when planning a years study so the cause\effect diagrams were quite disorganised, the mind maps are better organised, I can now start to see a way forward.
The final part of the planning process will be to create a coherent plan, a plan that covers the next few months in detail and the next year in broad terms.
I feel that as long as I can see what I need to do I will be more likely to succeed, I need some type of road map, without one I would feel a bit lost and overwhelmed by the task.
The mind maps forced me to organise the study plan and to define what I need to do so I am now a lot more certain about what the dissertation will entail.
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