Learning new skills through sample projects

Kishore

(September 2002)

Skill enhancement is something I focus on regular basis. Additional skills always help you to excel at job. As new technology emerges and one starts progressing in career new skills are needed to be able to perform and remain competitive. During such self training I design and develop sample projects to help me learn faster. 

Sample Projects and its utility in a team:

Sample projects also helped me train my team members to hone their skills. I used this practice consistently in my career so far and hope to continue it. Whenever a new team member joins the team, his task was to take up a sample project and demonstrate his skills. This initial phase gave the new member a chance to prove his capability and get used to how things work in the team. While learning the ropes the team member quickly improves on his skills and learns on other cultural aspects of the company and team like quality standards. Sometimes we successfully made the sample project part of the next version of the product as a new feature.

Sample Projects for self:

Sample projects helped me learn new skills and master the skill. When I started learning ASP coding, I designed and developed my own financial management system. I worked on it for more than 3 months (around 15-30 min a day whenever time permitted). I started with a simple form to record my expenses. First it was without any features. After first form started working, I started fixing bugs and enhancing the form to suit my requirements. After sometime I added a few reports to analyze my expenses. I also added a form to update and delete expenses.

While implementing all these new features I learned more and more of ASP programming and by putting them to use, I felt satisfied with my new skill set.

Soon I was able to utilize this new skill in developing an intranet for our group. This was quite useful and effective for the team.  I used the same skill in many places including this homepage. 

Summary

Learning new programming languages is not as simple as reading through a book. A practical application of the language helps us to RETAIN the skill. One should be innovative in thinking of a business problem and coming up with a 'sample project' and try to solve the problem by applying the new skill. After gaining this practical experience we get confidence in the new skill and will be able to put it to use immediately with confidence when required.

If you want some ideas for sample projects do let me know. I can design some as I have some ideas in mind.