MS Software Engineering Project Ideas II

Its time again  for students to find innovative projects. I am bombarded with emails from my students on this subject so here I am posting some of my ideas again. Feel free to discuss any with me.
I also posted few in my last Post on the subject. Some of them may have been chosen by my past students.


Project#1 - Measure productivity of your employees
It has been found that within few years:

• workers will collaborate 80% of their time
• work will flow seamlessly, fluidly, across fully connected and visible processes
• agility will become key performance metrics
• workers will evolve to be more client focused
• pro-active capabilities will be strengthend with predictive capabilities
• work will not be centered on an organization but on a community of people 
• batch processing will be forgotten, real time will be the norm

Create a tool/portal for employers to use various mathematical models to prduce some of the metrics discussed aove, so that employer can maximize productivity and employees can maximize skills and professional growth

Project#2 - Intra-networking tool

A tool/portal to allow your employees to network by:

•  pairing up for lunch  -    employees (executive or regular) sign up and system pairs them up for lunch together either at company cafeteria or outside restaurant (promotes openness and collaboration)
• pairing up for upcoming project - employees sign up with their interest and availability and system uses, technical skills as well as their social interaction data to pair them or group them for upcoming project
• pairing up for mentee/mentoring  

Project#3 - WomenRule
Gather data on executive leadership team of fortune 100 companies and visualize the gender participation

• same with fortune 500 companies
• do the same for other countries 
• come up on some cool analytics... which sector has highest participation of women and men etc...
• even go further by providing features and plug-ins for personality development, leadership training etc..

My own 10 tech predictions for 2013

1. "BigData" buzz will reach its pinnacle in 2013. Predictive analytics will become part of all applications, small or big. Small biz customer centric app will embrace these technology for their competitive advantages in big way. For IT professionals like us acquiring statistical and predictive modelling skills will be the key.
2. Low power computing will emerge winner. The unprecedented success of tiny Raspberry pi (close to 1 million units sold)  is teaching kids all over the world fundamentals of computer sciences. Everybody should take a bite. I took a bite too. This was my Christmas treat to myself. ARM based computing is already giving powerhouse Intel run for their money. 
3. Free online professional classes (Udacity/Coursera etc..) will go Freemium model. They might start offering a group of related courses as part of certificate programs and might tie up with local community colleges for classroom engagement to make them more effective. In any case, this model is going to get bigger and by 2015 if not now will give big brand schools run for their money. 
4. Mac will become platform of choice for independent software developers. Employees will be encouraged for BYOD (Bring your own device) Mac to work and they will reimburse the employee as well for the device up to certain limit. Some startups already do this.
5. Traditional databases in cloud will not fly. NoSQL databases will be preferred choice for WebScale  database. Some NoSQL databases will be trying to accommodate ACID properties. Others will stick to new meaning of ACID (Associative,  Commutative, Idempotent and Distributive) 
6. Data warehouses will move towards appliances model. More plug-and-play refrigerator like systems will entry into market. These appliances will have easy load of data, analysis and dashboarding built-in.
7. Micro lending platform will make ways into many other territories such as Student loan. Some regulations are already being approved for such loans. 
8. Every organization will use social software to uncover hidden (under water) organization. For example , employees emails and chat discussions will be analyzed by the machine to come up on analytics that can be used to improve collaboration and efficiency.
9. Data Scientists will be one of hottest job. This will prefer PhD in Mathematics/statistics but comp sci professionals with analytic experience will be preferred.
10. Javascript skills both at client and server side will be high in demand. Those with mobile software development experience will have plenty of opportunity both for salaried and freelance jobs.

My 2013 Resolution

This is something I created on the first day of 2012 as well. Some of my goals worked, some stretched goals were partially achieved. I overachieved some. My mentors and coaches agree with me but at the same time I have received extremely valuable comments and feedback from them on some of my weakness I am more interested in finding what I can do better this time. I came across an HBR article on leadership which used a powerful metaphor to explain the effectiveness of the strategy. The gist of it is that if your pair up your strategy well, it will work more effectively that it will work alone. An obvious example is simply working on your technical expertise may not go very far if you do not work on improving your ability to communicate with your audiences. Here are some of the combination of skills that I plan to work on early next year:

1. Implement organizational efficiencies by improving interpersonal skills. Bringing changes without boiling the ocean is something I am determined to work on. I have been very successful in making positive changes through process orientation and strategic execution, but in the process, make few people unhappy. In fact, this one goes beyond pairwise in my opinion. As a leader, I need to create an environment where I have higher level of commitments from my staff and co-workers so that they stick to the ideas and implementation. 
2. Become more customer focused by Inspiring your group to use your product everyday. This is going to be challenging, but unless we use our product like our customer do, there is no silver bullet that can improve quality of the product. Thinking like customer opens your mind for new ways of using which can create new product and business opportunity. 
3. Reaching stretch goals by inspiring others. This is something I have found extremely effective both at my workplace and in my classroom. I have overachieved some of my goals by motivating and inspiring my students to think like entrepreneur and create something which impacts millions. 

I am looking forward to learning new techniques to improve my leadership skills. I know that these skills can be acquired by education and polished at workplace. Good luck to emerging leaders and Have a extremely successful New Year !