Project 3

As of writing this reflection, I've currently finished the first part of this project, the Business Position document, and am just starting the spreadsheet for calculating the costs. So far, this project has taken... longer than expected... as in, I'm-still-working-on-this-project-a-week-after-due-date late. The main two reasons why I've been so late with working on this project is procrastination and also shifting my focus to GAD170's work, as that had been neglected for a while because I was working on my projects for this module. There was also a personal issue I was dealing with that was causing a deal of stress to me, which also didn't help with time management.

I found some of the questions for the first part of the project, the Business Position document, to be quite challenging to answer. Some of the more straightforward questions were easy to answer, and I was able to find sources for questions like the positioning statement which I was a bit unsure about how to word, but I found some of the more complex questions such as what industry sectors I would connect to were quite harder to understand and answer correctly. I had to get another person to help me understand these questions, but in the end, I answered all of them. My document is over double the word count that was required, and this is because there was a lot of information to record and I didn't want the answers to be simple sentence-long answers with not much effort put into it.

The rest of the project seems fairly straightforward with the information that I have now, so I should be able to get it done without much more of a hiccup.

So first of all, time management was really not something I had in this project. The procrastination, shifting of focus and personal issue really disrupted my organization and, most importantly, my time management. The procrastination was mainly because of the fact that I found the first part of this project quite hard to answer, so I was getting distracted quite easily or changing my focus a lot to other things such as my GAD170 work. I thought that by putting my focus onto my GAD170 work on the days where I don't feel like I can answer the questions for the Business Position document, I would eventually have a day where I would be able to answer it and get through it. Unfortunately, despite my thought process, this did not happen and, although I did eventually start on the document and answer a few of the questions, I sought help. I also got pretty stressed as the days went by and no progress was being made on the document.

I know now from this experience that it's better to ask for help than to try and figure this out myself.

Now that I know what to do here, I should be alright with completing the remaining parts of this project. I've got the information I need to help me calculate the costs, so that's a plus. I think something I should've done differently was the procrastination, switching to other tasks and not asking for help. That's something that clearly did not work in my favour and only made things worse, such as time constraints. Next time, if I'm stuck on something and I need help on a part to get through it, I'll go ahead and ask for help instead of wasting time procrastinating like I did here. If I do this, I'll be able to get a project done before the deadline, let alone done within a reasonable time. I also won't get as stressed if I'm able to do that as I won't have to try and juggle multiple different projects at once.

So as expected, the rest of the project went better than the first part. It certainly didn't take as long to get everything done, as I was able to complete the rest of the project within two days as opposed to part 1 taking a few weeks. In saying that though, there was one thing that didn't go to plan, which was part 3 of this project, the funding investigation. As I found out, there isn't actually any funding programs for software development companies to get started with their ideas, at least from what I could find across like 8 different sources, most of which were Australian Government sources.

I did need a bit of external help to do some of the spreadsheet, which is also where the average cost for things like the chairs, printers, etc. came from, but it was a bit easier to do than the document so I didn't have an extremely hard time finishing it. Overall, looking back on this project, I think this project was an utter trainwreck to get started, but thanks to the generousity of Edwin for allowing me the extra time to get these project done, I was able to get this project done eventually and to a standard that I'm happy with.

So... yeah. This whole project was completed pretty late as a result of procrastination among other things, as said before, and the personal issue I was having at the start of this project until a couple of weeks in definitely did not help at all. I feel pretty alright with the way this project turned out, with the pretty lengthy Business Position Document and the startup and running costs spreadsheet. I think I did too a bit too much on the word count for the first document, with the total word count being over double what was required of me to do, but that was because there was quite a bit of information to record for the question, and to be frank, I'm not the best at writing short descriptions sometimes.

I definitely should have asked for help earlier. That is the main point here, and one of the main reasons why I took so long in the delivery of this project. I got stuck on the document and didn't ask anyone for help until a few weeks in, when I finally gave in and asked for help. I believe this in of itself is also a procrastination thing as I think that a good day will come where I can suddenly figure it out for myself, but as said before and as clearly shown, that didn't happen—in fact, I can't actually recall a day in any of my trimesters where I have had one of these days on a day that wasn't awfully close to the deadline of a project.

I think the main take away here is to ask for help sooner, not later. If I ask for help sooner, I won't have to deal with the same thing over again with the added stress, and I'll have more time that I can dedicate to other projects that I may also be very passionate about and what to put extra time into. Speaking of which, I think it would be better to change the way I multitask with projects between modules. One of the reasons why I got this project in late was because I shifted my focus to my GAD170 work and didn't shift my focus back until a few days later, which was even further into the already late due date. I can solve this by planning out the days that I do my projects so I can designate each day for a specific project and get more done for each class.