Class notes from 1-26-11

Class discussion centered mostly around creating budgets for the project. The idea of a buffer within the budget was suggested. I've always been told to call it a contingency. Buffer sounds like you just but money into the budget just because, contingency implies you recognized the unknown, evaluated it, and are prepared for it. I don't believe this part of the project will be a difficult one for me with my passed work in estimating of real world jobs. I do remember my first estimate being a daunting task, but with the help of mentors and the knowledge gained by mistakes this skill has come a long way. Unfortunately even with all my experience in estimating, when it come to software estimates, to many times in the past  it has had to be a swag. I hope by the end of this class that my software estimating skills will be more refined and less "swaggish".

I spent a fair amount of time over the last few days in both mental design and in doing background research on my project. The concept of a web portal and designing apps for smart phones is probably my biggest concern right now. The lower end (embedded) portion of the project is well understood and can easily be estimated. Web searches into the android SDK, including viewing a few videos on the topic has helped with my understanding of this part of the project. The android SDK seems to use a standard version of Java with special extensions that allow access to the phone specific interfaces. I was also able to located some sample code that allows simple, customizable web browser interfaces using Java. On the web portal side, some examples of  how this could be done were also found. None of these sample codes do exactly what I want, but they do give me the knowledge that what I have proposed for a project is probably within the scope of the class.

Additional research into the project proposal for a remote control thermostat revealed that this is not as original an idea as I had hoped. With a lot of mental design (walking the halls, waking at 3 in the morning, ect) this week I think I have a good handle on how to make my project unique and sell-able. I've learned over the years that sometimes it is not the super sophisticated products that sell, but rather the ones that fill an unfulfilled need in a niche marked.Although the preliminary proposal paragraph will still hold true, I will need to add these new ideas into the final proposal to make a truly unique product.