Blog 4

It's been more than a month since I started working on the capstone and I certainly had some challenges along the way. At least I see some clear solutions now. I still have to get my data fixed. But I believe that won't take a long time. Another major hurdle is finding out whether they allow Tableau to be installed in their work laptop. So far, I have not been given the clearance. And I'm expecting good news with this because my whole project rests on using Tableau to visualize the data by creating multiple dashboards.

So far working on this project, I realized the importance of inter-departmental communication. You have to be very precise and clear what you are saying and what you need from the other person. Words can easily be misunderstood and misjudged and lots of unnecessary time can be wasted. Earlier, in my previous blogs I had mentioned, how valuable is asking questions. Both of these go together. Asking the right questions and clearly stating what you require from the client. Although the client is one entity, you have to deal with multiple people in various departments to get what you need. 

I've been working tirelessly for the past couple of weeks to study the data and there are lots of issues with it. I believe I could have taken less time with it. Since I've a full time internship going alongside with it, it's harder for me to prioritize sometimes. And in some cases, the people I want to meet may not be available much earlier to talk through it. Arranging meetings is another hurdle because these are all very busy people and they have meetings all the time and I have to schedule accordingly. But people the I want to meet are very friendly,  and polite. That's another thing i wasn't expecting. They are very patient and they don't mind how irritating I'm with the questions and my client manager is always ready to clear my doubts anyway she can. 

I always get frustrated whenever I reach a standstill with my project and I don't like being stagnant. I'm thinking of finishing my project in the next month as earlier as possible and I hope that can be done by then. Once the data is fixed and ready to go, it won't take me much time to analyze some trends in it.