Tag archives for ou
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Requirements – Five Steps to Great Requirements
Requirements are the key to getting a good solution, whether in procurement or just choosing between options. Most people get their requirements wrong, largely because they haven't drawn this connection. Requirements analysis is the first stage in the systems engineering process and software development process. Systems Engineering Fundamentals Defense Acquisition University Press, 2001 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Common Mistakes This list isn't exhaustive, I'm sure there are many more ways that requirements can go wrong. having too many not prioritising not engaging end users to develop requirements that meet their needs just throwing everything in that users ask for, without analysis of necessity (the big stapler approach) having requirements that constrain options to a specific solution ( "we need to upgrade Oracle" rather than "we need a database"). I've spent years as an analyst, and leading teams of business analysts, coming up with requirements…
A215 – Meta Poetry
The third online tutorial is now on the go, following a poetry day school last weekend (where I read out some Burns since it was the 25th). Anyway the exercise is to write a poem based on the model of Amanda Dalton's How to Disappear. So this is the second draft of my meta poem, a further draft (poetry as a process) will be posted later on when I've had some feedback and had time to let it rest a wee bit. How to write poetry How can an ordinary person like me possibly do it? How am I supposed to get all those words arranged on the page? How do I learn to write beautiful poetry? Recognise that poetry doesn't appear ready to read. Like a block of stone, it needs careful chiselling, chip by chip, into shape. What goes…
A215 Short Fiction – Planting the Past
Art journal ideas1 - give away (Photo credit: ewian) This is a piece of short fiction written for the first online tutorial of A215 Creative Writing. It followed on from three exercises intended to spur some creativity. The exercises centred around thinking of a place that you love being and then asked questions about that place. The first was some descriptive writing about the place, things you could see, smell, hear etc. The second was to write about a flash memory in the present tense and the last was to list some facts about the place and then spin off some 'what ' questions related to those facts. This last one was what really got my 400 word piece of fiction going. So here it is, all 400 words of it. Planting the Past Hands resting on her heavily pregnant…
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More Studying
After a short break I'm back studying with the OU, for two reasons, one of which is that as a continuing student before the fee increases I need to do at least one course a year to keep that dispensation, and the other is that I've found out that I can't get credit for my previous studies (a from the University of Glasgow from 1989-1992) because they were too long ago. So my idea of upgrading my Ordinary degree to an Honours is going to take a lot longer (but will leave me with two degrees as the OU degree I'm working towards is a BA(Hons) in Business Studies). Anyway, having done 90/120 points at level 3 I'm now back to level 1 and have just started the 30 point MST121 Understanding Mathematics course. This is a little late as…
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Strategy Study Notes
I am currently (Aug 2011) studying module B301 "Making Sense of Strategy" with the Open University. This is a final year (third year, level 3) undergraduate module which forms a core part of their BA in Business Studies. I have an exam in mid-October 2011, so I thought that rather than use index cards (as I did when I did my at the University of Glasgow (1989-1992)) I would stick all the core ideas and other facts to cram for the exam into some wiki pages, which I could then edit and refine much more easily. Also I will probably then convert all it into something easily printable to re-read as many times as possible prior to the exam. So here are my Strategy Study Notes. Related articles Library Services Open Day - Thursday 11th August 2011 " University of Glasgow Library () Stakeholder Management…