SDM so far...

Its been a great year...I enjoyed the Fall courses I had:
a. Systems Architecture : I don't know where and how I will use what I learned in Systems Architecture . I think course is looks at a very high level at Systems Architecture and gives a very generic view. I really likes the guest lectures though - Liebeck and Imrich...Its always good to hear people from real world who have used Systems Architecture principles but in varied ways.

b. Project Management: The best of this lecture apart from Project Management theory and tools was prof. De Weck. I really liked is focused and disciplined teaching style. His lectures had nice balance of discussions and the material which needs to be covered. Lot of time profs get carried away by discussion and digress from lecture which can be fun at times but folks loose on the content which was suppose to be covered. This seldom happend in De Weck's class.

c. Software Systems Architecture: This lecture was ad hoc, except some consistent lectures around healthcare and software evolution. Part of the course was to read "Dreaming in Code" which I thought was alright books, it had its high and low chapters. The course load was light though and there were lot of interesting readings and videos which we saw and discussed.

The load was quite a lot though and I wanted a break so badly after Fall semester that I did not even touch any book for next 6 weeks, just took rest, spent some resting time with family and friends. Now back in Spring Sem I think I should have spend couple of weeks to get back in study mood.

SDM so far has been about reading from a spectrum of subjects and for me I guess challenge is to tie all pieces together. Going forward I think I'll need to look back and gather the linkages from courses which are done and the ones which are remaining and get some kind of structure. The good or bad thing about a program like SDM is that you have quite a bit of flexibility to choose what you want to study but it also needs good amount of thinking and planning to choose right courses which will best suite the career path ahead.

Some of SDM'08 have left, best of luck to them. Got to talk to some of the SDM '09 folks - welcome....Looking forward to meet you folks during Spring Business Trip.

- Ashok Dhiman.