The Word of mAn[S]o0r

By education, im a Masters Student in Software Engineering. As a requirement for my degree i have to submit a masters thesis on any chosen topic of my choice in the field.

Brimming with the usual (i read about it before) optimism of the newly inducted researcher of wanting to change the world... i forged ahead and mapped out what i wanted to do. With no clear guidance, and only the guideline to 'select a topic', i thought to myself.. whats the hottest thing in the industry today.. answer... PROCESS IMPROVEMENT. Its a buzz word, paired with more acronyms such as ISO and SW-CMM and CMMI, its the ultimate way to attain the students dream ! A big paycheck ! The next step.. choose a supervisor. One of the biggest problems in this domain was.. there arent any good supervisors to choose from ! Finally i settled on a guy who taught us a course in SQA and Testing, who, as i've come to learn subsequently, is a gem of a guy!

I read a little on the topic, googled it a lot, and couldnt find anything useful as such, so with what little confidence i had, took the first step. Gave my thesis topic a catchy name. This name, was immediately shot down by both my Head of the Department and my supervisor.
So much for confidence ! then after a series of modifications, my topic was finally ready.... it read "An empirical study of Software Process Initiatives undertaken by Pakistani Software Development organizations" . NOT BAD ! note how i incorporated the name of my country into the title ! tells you a lot about my patriotism.. doesnt it ! (but thats another story for another day). Haha !

Then... from the university came guidelines to submit a thesis plan.. and the *dreaded* LITERATURE SEARCH ! This where most of my woes arise from ! i thought, given my earlier experiences, that much data was not available on the topic.... oh how naive of me ! I just wasnt looking in the right places ! One day, having decided to alteast start up initially on literature search, i opened up google, and resolved to find atleast 5 to 10 papers which coincide with my research topic.......... and lo behold ! just like opening up pandora's box or was it aladin's cave??... ! i stumbled upon the secrets of searching for articles on google. Somehow, i was returned with almost 50 *relevant* papers ! and i thought to myself.. i hit the damn JACKPOT !! muhahahah (evil laugh).

Then started going through them.. and found out.. there's a HELL LOT of work done on the topic of my choice!. So much for my aspirations of making a breakthrough or even a small ripple in the world of s/w engg. research ! Oh well.. atleast now i'll know what to search for. right ? WRONG !!!!! from what i've read so far... i've got to modify (further still) both my topic and research methodologies!

Came across this line earlier (dont know where from though), when reading up on how to get a phd... "a student is ready for a phd, when they realize after reading and studying up on their subject of choice a long time, how little they know about the subject they're researching on". By that definition...... im ready for my PhD now !!!

I'll be posting more and more updates whenever i feel as if i've hit a brick wall or gone through it for that matter !


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