Chapter 4 - Patience is a Virtue

Since beginning this project, I have been able to hit the ground running. Everything up to this point has pretty much gone according to plan. Well, that was until this week. My original plan for this week was to get the data downloading procedures completed and documented. However, I had assignments due this week in my other classes that were more pressing. These assignments forced me to push my plans back until next week. On top of that, it has not been a full month since previously downloading the data, another issue that delayed my plans. If I wait until next week, it will have been a month since previously downloading the data. As such, much to my chagrin, I decided to hold off on downloading the data for yet another week.

Since I could not complete the downloading procedures this week, I was pretty flustered. I really wanted to complete them this week and move on to something else. However, as they say, patience is a virtue. It just so happens to be that patience is not entirely my best virtue. This is something I am going to have to learn how to handle. There will be many times in the future where other factors will either delay or alter plans for a project. I will have to learn that I cannot complete everything all at once and that projects such as these are dedicated, long-term tasks. I feel this will come with more experience. I simply have not had enough projects under my belt to realize the pitfalls, trials, and tribulations that come with all projects. I have come to learn that there is more to this project than just trying to learn the IT skills. In fact, the IT skills are the least important thing in my mind. The lessons I am learning about project management will be invaluable to me. This includes the skills I am gaining in writing project plans. On top of the project, we have an assignment in the class that requires us to write up an official project plan. So, by the end of this project, I will have not only learned how to work with IT projects, I will have also learned how to write up project plans, a skill that will definitely assist me in any future project.

With that said, the entire week was not a wash. I did have some free time, so I began taking a look at some of the possible options I could use to separate the out of range data points. There are many options to choose from and I as began looking at them, I became slightly overwhelmed. I realized that this could take me a bit longer than I anticipated. There are a lot of possible ways to take the two columns (relative humidity and temperature) and pull out the out of range data points (RH greater than 55 and temperature above 70). As I looked at them, I realized that I am not entirely sure what the best approach is to this problem. However, I am confident that I have the ability to come up with a working procedure.

First, I realized that the downloading procedures that I will create next week will affect how I start the procedure for the out of range data points. When creating the downloading procedures, I have to get the data into a format that will allow me to create the procedure for extracting the out of range data points. Thankfully, I had already come up with a few ideas when I downloaded the data for the first time last month. Last time, I followed the downloading procedures that the previous group had come up with. After completing those downloading procedures you end up with four Excel spreadsheets, one for each HOBO device (this was before I added two more devices). I realized at that time that it was going to be far easier to handle all of the data if those four spreadsheets were combined into one. If you left the data from the devices in four separate spreadsheets, you would have to run the same procedures four times, which, needless to say, is quite inefficient.

So I went ahead and came up with a rough idea of how to get all of the data into one spreadsheet. First, you still need to follow the same downloading procedures that will create the individual spreadsheets for each device. From there, you would copy all of the data from each of the individual spreadsheets and you would paste it into a master spreadsheet. Then you would run the data procedures that would separate the out of range data points for all of the devices at one time, rather than having to run it for each device separately. Once you were done with the data in the master spreadsheet, you could run a macro in Excel that would clear the data, making the master spreadsheet ready for the next month.

I feel I have a pretty good strategy for getting all of the data together into one file. Once the data is in one file, I have to figure out what to do with it. As mentioned, there are several ways to tackle this. You could sort all of the data by temperature first and then just take out the ones that are above 70. Then you could do the same for relative humidity. This would get you the outlying points, but that does not let you really track or compare any data. This would only get you the number of out of range points. So, I began looking at some other ideas. However, I was unable to really come up with any concrete. My plan is to separate the out of range points based on the date and time they were recorded and then map those points to the corresponding device. This would allow you to see which device, on a certain date and time, registered an out of range point. However, I have not been able to determine the best approach for extracting the out of range points. Some of my ideas include using pivot tables, filters, or macros. However I choose to do this, I am confident that I can find a procedure that will pull out the needed data and get it organized into one printable sheet.

Even though this week was quiet and I did not get the chance to work very much on the project, I still had an opportunity to learn. I learned that you must sometimes be patient and that you have to work around problems. There will most certainly be unforeseen factors that will delay my future projects. I must learn to find ways to advance the project while remaining patient for the problem to become resolved. So although it was a somewhat frustrating week, there is no doubt that it was a great learning experience. Next week, I will describe the process of downloading the data from the devices and I will describe the new documentation I will be writing. Until next week, thanks for reading.