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Open University Module Choices for Early 2024

Module Choices

After my thoughts on continuing my studies with the Open University, I’ve decided on two modules to take next. These are:

This is a fair bit more work than I’ve been doing so far with my studies, however, I think that will be a good balance between the work required and a timeline for completing an MSc. These are also modules where I feel that I’ll already have a reasonable grounding based on my experience in the industry.

M813 - Software Development

In this course, it will be focusing on Java and design choices around that. I haven’t used Java in a number of years (almost a decade now that I think about it!), however, I have been using a lot of C#, and I’ve been looking at other C-based languages. In addition to this, the focus on software design patterns and the like which will come up in this module should be fine for me, as I’ve been using these in my work for a number of years.

When it comes to Java, I think this should be a fun refresher for me. I don’t think the module itself goes into much detail of the language in particular, however, knowing myself, I’ll probably end up reading more about the language that I need to.

Interestingly, as part of this module, we’re given access to a book on design patterns, namely Head First Design Patterns. This is a book that I’ve been tempted by in the past, however, I’ve always defaulted back to the Gang of Four book when I’ve needed to look up a design pattern. I’m looking forward to seeing how this book compares to the Gang of Four book. My impression from what I’ve read elsewhere is that the Head First book is a bit more accessible, however, I’m not sure how much that will matter to someone who’s already familiar with the patterns.

M815 - Project Management

This is an area which I’ve obviously been involved in during my work, however, in recent years this has come more to the fore as I’ve been working at a more senior level. This is really the reason why I feel like I should be able to do this module without too much difficulty. While I haven’t been directly overseeing much from the project management side, I have been involved in these processes. I’ve also done a fair amount of reading on the subject.

Part of the interest in this for myself is how I’ve found a lot of project managing thus far. In my professional life, I’ve mostly been working on teams which have been following a scrum-esque approach, and while this seems to work for many people, I often find that it doesn’t work that well for me. Personally, I’m more of a fan of a kanban approach, and this is what I would use for my own projects. Kanban is also how I feel I end up working a lot of the time, within the confines of a scrum team - which is a messy way to work when you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

For me, kanban gets out of the way, whereas scrum seems to want to affect everything around how the project is managed. However, this may say more about how I’ve seen each of these implemented rather than how they are best implemented for how I would like to work.

(I would like to highlight that one of the important parts of any project management approach is finding something which works for the people working on the team, so it’s very much not a one-size-fits-all approach)

Moving forwards

I’m looking forward to both of these modules, and to keeping this website updated with my progress. Of the two, I imagine I’ll probably be learning more from the project management module, but we’ll see how that goes…

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