Productivity tips for writing assignments (Part 1)

Introduction

I am currently studying Software Engineering at the University of Liverpool through Laureate Online Higher Education, and after 3 modules, I found some productivity tips that I would like to share. This will be a walkthrough of how I usually start by analysing the question given, and how I do my research, and how I then put it all together.

Some notes:

• I use Microsoft OneNote for notetaking, but some of my classmates have also recommended evernote as one great application to gather your notes.
• Access to online resources, such as ACM.org or IEEE is an important factor, in order to get quality some resources to base your statements of your document upon.
• Note-taking is time consuming, and may interrupt your train of thought. Therefore you should keep the activities in your note taking application while you write, and once you think you've found enough information, then switch to word or open office (or your favorite word processing application) to produce your final document.
• If you have problems with procrastinating, I would highly recommend the Pomodoro Technique, and use the free Pomodoro Application to help you stay on the task. (You should find the time to read the book about the pomodoro technique, which also is free to download).

Getting Started

Now, with those things stated, let's dive into the actual task: Writing the assignment. Well, not exactly, because you need to understand your question(s) before writing anything. Therefore, let us take a look at one example question:

Directions: Complete one of the exercises.
1. You have been asked to design a secure system that requires strong authentication and authorization. The system must be designed so that communications between parts of the system cannot be intercepted and read by an attacker. Suggest the most appropriate client-server architecture for the system and, giving reasons for your answer, propose how functionality should be distributed between the client and the server system.

2. Your customer wants to develop a system for stock information where brokers can access information about companies and evaluate various investment scenaries using a simulation system. Each broker uses this simulation in a different way, according to his or her experience and type of stocks in question. Suggest a client-server architecture for this system that shows where functionality is located. Justify the client-server system model that you ahve chosen.

3. You are developing a vacation package reservation service for a travel agent. Design a workflow that will book ground transportation for a group of passengers arriving at an airport. They should be given the option of booking either a taxi or renting a car. You may assume that the taxi and car rental companies offer web services to make a reservation. 

First of all, you should try figuring out which question will produce most thoughts, and will have a lot of resources. Remember that the easiest question will probably not be the one that gives you the best grades, if it includes a lot of prior knowledge or current assumptions. You need to go into detail and analyse critically the parts of the assignment. That said, you should not exclude the easiest question from your possible answers - just remember to choose wisely.

Continue to "Analysing the question" >>