Introduction to Information Technology Assessment 1
About Me
Jeremy Jacobs, Student No.: s3970974, Email: s3970974@student.rmit.edu.au.
I am forty-six, third generation Australian with a British and German background. I finished my Higher School Certificate in 1993 and I have attempted various study, but I am yet to complete anything to date. During high school I touched on Spanish, French and German however, the only language I am fluent in is my native English.
This is my first attempt to complete a university course, so I am starting a little late but better late than never. I have 16 years work experience in the Finance Industry and my business partner, and I have recently started an IT Consulting Company where he has 25 years’ experience in the field.
Interest in IT
My interest in IT is “Bridging the Gap between the Business and Technology.” My interest started in the 1980s with my first computer the Commodore 64. I was so impressed and intrigued by this machine that it was at that stage I wanted to learn about programming and making the computer do repetitive and complex tasks in a simple user-friendly manner. My parents sparked my interest in technology by buying me my first computer. I was encouraged by my family and teachers at school to learn as much as possible about this type of technology. In 1990 my parents bought me an IBM P/S 1 and it was at that point I discovered dial up bulletin board services, word processing and spreadsheets.
My first full time job was as a Junior Accounts Clerk for a small paper recycling company called “Aspex Paper Australia Pty Ltd” in Homebush Bay in 1994. At this job I would learn the ins and outs of WordPerfect and Lotus 123. My boss sent me to a training course on Advanced Lotus 123 at a training company called “Management Technology Education”. There I learnt a lot of advanced functions like linking cells and advanced graphs etc. My only real IT experience is in the Finance Industry I have no actual IT experience.
I chose to come to RMIT Online as it was the only course I could get into in this field of interest. Also, RMIT has a very good reputation for excellence in the IT area. I’m actually studying this course through Open Universities Australia. I would like to gain enough knowledge so that I can help out with programming and the like in the company I run with my business partner. It would be nice to grasp several different programming languages and IT skills that would help me on my way.
Ideal Job - Business Analyst
This position involves working with the business stakeholders on projects defining business needs and documenting requirements. Finding solutions that best fit the needs of the business, supporting design, building, evaluating, and deploying activities that fulfill these requirements.
Skills, qualifications, and experience required for this position include: -
- Bachelor’s degree within IT, business/commerce, or project management
- Experience working as a business analyst within a finance or IT related field
- PRINCE2 qualification highly regarded
- Knowledge of Agile Business Analysis and BABOK highly regarded
- Strong knowledge of banking/financial services business
- Experience in requirements management using Waterfall and Agile methodologies
- Competent use of tools such as Visio, Excel, PowerPoint, MS Work JIRA, and Confluence
- Strong stakeholder management skills and people skills
I currently have the following skills, qualifications, and experience: -
- HSC Year 12 1993
- 16 years’ work experience in the finance industry doing administration and customer service
- I have an Advanced Certificate in Xero and Xero Payroll
- I’ve been using MYOB for about 6 years
To assist in bringing my skills up to scratch I plan to complete the Bachelor of Information Technology. The skills I am learning from my own IT Consultancy Business will also help. While studying I might try and do an internship somewhere if possible. My business partner has 25 years’ experience in the IT Industry, and he is always an immense help when it comes to learning different tasks.
Profile
Myers-Brigg’s personality test results
These results give an insight and some perspective as to how I behave and how I do things generally. Upon looking closer I can understand a bit better as to why I do things the way I do. Also, some of my motivations behind my behaviour choices. These results may influence my behaviour in a team because they highlight some of my behaviour traits, like introversion and extroversion. This helps to point out how this impacts myself and other people in the team environment. When forming a team in order to experience synergy and cohesion it’s important to include people in the team that represent different personality types. However, at the same time personalities that won’t clash and cause conflict or, egos above task completion.
Project Idea
My project idea is a Note Organising Application called “Notelet”.
Existing note taking smartphone applications tend to isolate and own your data, forcing you to store this data in their cloud database. This means that your data is often isolated in the system and generally unable to be integrated with other digital processes. Existing applications are also much too free form in nature. Notelet will feature advanced functionality to address the weaknesses evident in other note-taking applications.
Notelet will track and log edits and changes to notes over time. Notelet will collaborate with colleagues and family members using shared notes. There will be defined note types which can request custom field input beyond just the note text itself. You will be able to search notes on any field, not just on hashtags. Notelet can organise notes into lists of which live in a drawer and folder with configurable rules about which types of notes can be stored in that type of list. Use a list to track your tasks on any project, input a due date and tick off the tasks when completed. Whilst also keeping a log of when tasks were entered and when ticked off the list.
Notelet will take advantage of the Google Drive and OneDrive APIs to keep an index and a backup of your notes in a dedicated folder on your cloud drive. You can even drop 'unorganised' files into the Notelet folders on your cloud drive and Notelet will discover them, asking you to add meta data in order to file them correctly.
We go back again to the traditional office metaphor:-
- Drawer is the top-level of navigation and note organisation, to keep work and home notes separate.
- Folders and sub-folders help to organise Lists into projects and on-going/perpetual tasks.
- Lists contain notes of the types supported by the list type.
- Notes can be categorised with properties. Tags are one such property.
Notelet will have speech to text facility using smartphone on android devices expanding to apple devices in the future. This will be pitched to personal and business alike. Appealing to a broad market including the disability sectors including vision and hearing impairment. Tags for priorities and differentiating task categories i.e. Colour or numerical coding. This app will be downloadable from the Google Play Store.