If you are worried about your first week project, worry no longer. Your DS aunty, yours truly, is here to help. I have gone through the first project before you and I have written this blog to give you advice for your own first week project.
Warning: If you use this advice, you will impress everyone, including TIL founder & MD Tom Brown. This power is not to be taken lightly.
- Take time to read and understand the scope.
The scope is possibly the most important part of a project. It ensures that the project accomplishes what the client needs. Asking questions may be necessary if the scope is vague, open-ended, or otherwise unclear.
2. Write a list of tasks the scope asks of you.
This will enable better organisation of time, and better clarity of thought while the project is ongoing. Practising breaking a project into smaller tasks now will help later when projects become more complex or require delegation. It’s similar to an Alteryx workflow. Rarely is it one tool all that is needed. More often, a desired output involves several tools both sequentially and concurrently and to be able to know what tools these would be, you will need to break down a task into smaller parts.
3. Plan your time realistically.
I gave myself only an hour to make a workflow. Similarly, I didn’t give myself enough time to practise my presentation. Knowing now what I need, I would have sat in a quiet spot in the office to run-though my presentation 2-3 times.
4. KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID.
The real reason I didn’t stick to my planned time for each task is because I suffer from a very common ailment that plagues many of us: perfectionism. Although, I was happy with the output of my Alteryx workflow, I spent far too long making the workflow streamlined and annotating every tool. I ate into the time I could have been practising my presentation. In retrospect, I would have sectioned my workflow for the presentation, rather than explaining every tool. I would have stopped working on my workflow at the time I had allocated and explained any loose ends, in the presentation.
5. When presenting, take time to speak.
Nerves can make us speak in weird ways. Coupled with a disordered way of thinking about tasks and an audience who may not be knowledgeable about the subject matter, and you’ve lost your audience. Robbin, our sage teacher, advised we take time to think between sentences, which would help us avoid filler words like ‘um’, ‘yeah’ and ‘uh’. And now I am taking this advice forward to you. Words like that should only be employed during a rap freestyle.
