CICT project series 1
When it comes to CICT projects, the list is endless on what
solutions you can come up with. After all the main aim of the project is to, as
K.A.S.N.E.B puts it “demonstrate skills
of practical application and problem solving, as well as techniques of
documentation and system testing.” Therefore, the whole point is for you to
develop an application solution that can be applied to a business problem or to
improve the current system. The best part is that there are numerous
businesses, numerous businesses means numerous problems. If these problems can
be looked at with an IT mind, there is a business solution to be developed.
The downside is that there is a catch:
1.
Skills
This goes without saying that you should know what you are
good at. For example, if the project of your choice is to develop let’s say a
web app that gives customers information on new products in the market, you
must be certain that you possess skills to build the app. First, determine all that
your application will need. You may be good with java programming, but soon you
realize that the application needs to run on a php server, so you will need to
know php code for the application to successful. In short, determine the
problem, and then from there list all the skills you will need to develop it.
Also, avoid projects concrete high geared skills. Projects
that require you to move outside IT scope are at time dangerous. For example if
you intend to develop an application that analyzes the stock market apart from
IT skills you will have to be a serious financial analyst guru.
Choose projects with that everyone can jump on the ocean to
help incase you drown in your code. Code in common languages like JavaScript,
visual basic or php, where in case you encounter a problem, you can easily find
help by posting your problem in programming forums like stackoverflow.
2.
Time
This is the most challenging factor. K.A.S.N.E.B requires a
candidate to choose a project that should be completed in four months. This
means that to be on the safe side, you should complete you project within a
period of 3 months. The remaining one month should be used to perfect your
program, fixing bugs, developing user documentation, testing among others.
Therefore, it is important to choose a straight forward project.
Avoid picking projects with too many inputs and outputs.
3.
Relevance
This is not a major issue since the candidate is required to
write a proposal to KASNEB before the project can be approved. Since most of
the time you will be working on the project on your own, it is my advice that
you think small. Start locally. Identify business problems within your region. The
problems identified should be small, don’t try to develop an application that
tackles an industrial problem as you will waste time trying to understand the
problem instead of writing code. An agile software development method is the
best to use. Create first the backbone, then, continually add features.
Example:
Assume you want to buy a movie and you have gone to your
local movie vendor, you realize that there are a lot of customers who want to
check if the movie seller has a certain movie and if possible watch a trailer
of the movie.
You can develop an application that automatically shows the
user if the kind of movie he/she is looking for is available by typing and the
user have the option of checking the preview, purchasing the moving or renting
it.
If you chose an agile approach, first develop the tables, relationships,
and queries need by the application. You can the go on incrementing features as
internet access, sms support among others
