Personal Reflection: Paul Nguyen

In the beginning, I didn’t really know what I should expect from this course. I thought that the course was to teach the many different ways there are to plan and control an ICT related project and hand the students some pointers to deal with them.

After the introductory lecture, I was puzzled about our assignment, which was writing a scenario on Google but also enthusiastic about doing research on this topic. Google is one of those companies that are constantly making the headlines and is very distinctive when looking at their strategy, work environment and innovation to name a few aspects.

While doing research on this topic, I was amazed how much information there was about Google and especially how many scenario’s there have been written about them. Each of them contribute to the different area’s Google is active in; from how they do business to how they have added value to people’s life. Not only academics or experts in the field of internet, also news stations (such as CNN and NBC) and webblogs are very interested in the future developments of this internet phenomenon. Reading through all sorts of scenario’s and gathering information for our research, my mind took a flight through different scenario’s that could take place in the (near) future. And I think that is the whole point about “scenario thinking”, not only determine what could happen in the short period but also debating and rethinking in the long run what can happen in five till ten years.

The most difficult part of scenario thinking is to determine which driving forces can play a decisive role for Google. Since they are involved in so many projects (wireless, advertisement, etc) I could include so many more driving forces that could steer the scenario towards different directions. I understand that these driving forces can be seen as the basis on which a scenario stands on but like with engineering a new house there are many other factors that decide that.

Overall, I really liked the course and the way it has been given. It was interactive and it was good to see the other scenario’s on different topics. Unfortunately, our class presentations took quite an amount of time and we couldn’t go into more depth for discussion.