Personal Reflection paper

Firts impression, Confusion: "What's in the name?"

When I first heard about the ICT planning course, my first reaction was: “Why do we need one more course on ICT planning??! Isn’t that what we have done almost in every ICT related course, such as: System’s development & Project management, ICT enabled process innovation, Software engineering, ICT strategy, etc…” But after the first class I discovered that the ICT planning course was actually not intended to teach us how to plan and take ICT decisions in businesses, like the other courses did…

Recognizing the importance: "It's all about the name!"

This course was, to the surprise of most of us, intended to teach us totally different skills, something that wasn’t covered in any other course we have had before. The ICT planning course was all about preparing for the future, considering not only facts (known things), but also uncertainties (unknown things) and with this trying to determine what can be expected. While doing this course I became more and more aware of the fact that most decisions that have to be taken (in business) are about the future, whilst most of human knowledge is about the past. Since we still have to take (business) critical decisions almost every day, there is a tool needed which enables us to have a view of the future from different (all possible) angles. Thinking about things in such a way (how will it evolve looked from different angles) helps us to get some knowledge about the future, although not always fully realistic. So my first impression of this course was wrong, but not prejudiced. It was rather a confusion created by the name of the course (which indicates the content to be more in the direction I was thinking of…) and the lack of a course description in the beginning of the course (which I think was done deliberately by Mr. Daniel Erasmus to keep the surprise...) :) Thus, first of all I think the name of the course should be changed in ”scenario thinking”, since the ICT planning course is all about this. :)

Doing this course I have learned a lot! I have learned about things I had never even heard of before (e.g.: Web 2.0, Intellectual Property). Not only this course helped me broaden my general knowledge, it also gave me some insights in thinking about things and the world around us in another way. And although the focus of this course was mainly on ICT related things, it effected my thinking about non-ICT related things as well, e.g.: what will happen/change if forest cutting will go on in it’s current pace?

Developing skills & Amassing knowledge during Assignment

Looking back I am very glad that we had the opportunity to do this course. An important thing I have learned is that scenarios are not predictions. It is rather a great tool to make stories about how the future might unfold for our organizations, our issues, our nations, and even our world. While thinking about the driving forces, enablers, inhibitors, Mr. Erasmus thought us to do exactly the opposite of what we had learned until now: “the messier the better!” I most admit, we enjoyed that. That part of the assignment was the fun part, the difficulty increased with the progress of the assignment, this is where we had to process all theinformation. Processing messy information is not easy we figured by then :) After processing and sorting the driving forces in technological, societal, cultural, environmental, etc., we selected the most important driving forces. Making the scenarios, taking the most plausible directions was I bit more tough. However, overall it was an experience I wouldn’t want to miss. The only bad thing about it was the scheduling (all compressed in one or two weeks), due to sickness of Mr. Erasmus. I would liked it if we had the full programme, as scheduled initially, so we would have the lectures spread over the whole period and we would be able to enjoy the classes even more (no 8-9 hours class in one day). :) In fact I liked this course so much that I’m considering to do something in this field in the future. :) Doing this course I have amassed the basic knowledge and skills for doing scenario thinking, so it certainly is a good starting point for me.

Conclusion

I would be glad to have a continuation of this course...As I stated before, since I realized that most of our knowledge is about the past and the dicissions we have to make are about the future, we better become proffesionals in thinking about the future in order to be succesfull in life. ;)