My Further Education as a Software Engineer
The motivation for further education as a Software Engineer at Wilhelm Büchner University was to learn more and, above all, in-depth IT know-how and thus generate clear added value for our customers. Often, the Software Engineer is not directly associated with project management. However, in addition to software development, he also takes on tasks of a process modeler, software architect, moderator, and project manager.
The different roles and responsibilities in software projects are multi-layered, complex, and thus a daily challenge. The further education as a Software Engineer gives me a comprehensive insight into how to optimally master challenges and hurdles in practice, even in software-heavy projects.
Part-time study requires a certain degree of self-discipline, where leisure time in the evening and on weekends must be sacrificed. Available vacation time is often used to prepare for exams. But ultimately, the motto applies: Nothing comes from nothing. However, part-time study offers the freedom of local and temporal division, and you have the opportunity to directly implement what you’ve learned in practice.
“The motivation for further education as a Software Engineer was to learn more and, above all, in-depth IT know-how.”
Daniel Sanchez
The Project Work
The challenges of software-intensive IT projects, but not only these, are particularly dependent on three factors:
Process Adherence
For project success, all stakeholders must adhere to the process. Interference or solo efforts by individual project members will, sooner or later, result in process flows not being cleanly executed. This leads to a reduction in project and result quality. Regardless of which engineering model is used, without process adherence, the project is doomed to failure. The further education helped me through the methodical approach in a soft- and hardware transition project to understand the structure of the organizational and technical processes in detail. Setting up the processes was crucial for the success of the project.
Documentation and Ongoing Reports
In addition to the project order, ongoing project status reports are one of the most important documents in the project, as requirements can change at any time due to legal, economic, or social reasons. The project status report is used to inform a steering committee or the project manager about the latest status. Theory states that this should be held every 4 weeks to inform all stakeholders about the latest facts in the project. In practical application, there was indeed a noticeable and measurable increase in appreciation and collegiality, and it led to a rapid increase in the quality of results.
Communication
From personal experience, we know that misunderstandings are always on the agenda in human communication. It therefore requires a common understanding between those involved to successfully complete the project, especially during the conception and design phase. The Unified Modeling Language (UML) proved to be very helpful here. This was used to implement the learned theory in the software part of the customer project in the form of specification, construction, documentation, and visualization of software parts and other systems.
Conclusion
In few projects do hard and soft skills correlate as much as in software and hardware projects. Only with the right mix of shared understanding, process adherence, and available documentation can complex software projects be successfully managed within time, budget, and desired quality. The part-time path to becoming a Software Engineer is challenging and simultaneously desirable. The combination of theory, applied practice, self-discipline, and self-organization has allowed me to grow not only professionally but especially personally.
