Introduction to The It Professional Portfolio and Its Purpose

IT Professional Portfolio is an organised collection of relevant artefacts and documents that showcase the individual's qualifications, education, training, skills & experience in Information Technology in line with the individual's professional growth objectives and goals. The purpose of the IT Professional Portfolio is to enable the individuals to demonstrate the personal and professional attributes for the target audience. Any Professional portfolio will have two sections of Personal and Professional.

IT Profession and Attributes

Personal working portfolio section highlights attributes like Confidence, proactivity, Resilience, Adaptability, Flexibility and Positivity with relevant examples, allow the target audience to understand more about life goals, personal strengths and areas for improvement. It also serves the purpose of self-assessment to gain an understanding of the individual continuous learning and cultivate critical personal attributes that help the individual's career growth. This section provides comprehensive and detailed and remains static irrespective of the target audience. Also, culture and conduct at work are equally critical to demonstrate with relevant examples of the individual's characteristics of Reliable, Honest and cultural sensitivity will be an added advantage.

Professional portfolio section demonstrates the professional attributes of educational qualifications, training, certifications and job skills relevant to meet individuals career goals and aspirations. It also catalyses to identify the professional growth opportunities, conclusively demonstrates the skills with relevant experience during the interviews, navigate career evolution with effortlessly. Besides professional attributes of technical expertise, problem-solving, efficient, detail oriented, passionate towards technology and result oriented, individuals for technology leadership roles need to include professional attributes such as Leadership, Motivation, Communication with the ability to convey the message to both technical and non-technical audiences, Time-management, Teamwork, Multi-tasking and Time Management to be demonstrated with relevant work experience examples.

Professional Goals

Career success may not happen without significant efforts. Setting professional goals is the first step in the process.

Expand professional knowledge to play a leadership role in Cybersecurity: Learning is a never-ending process. Irrespective of academic qualifications, there are several opportunities like enrolling in courses, workshops and training. Obtaining certifications will demonstrate the individual's passion towards expanding professional knowledge, and relevant work experience will ensure the gained knowledge applied to good use at work. Being an IT professional and ever-changing technology landscape, it is essential to learn new skills and practices to continue and grow. With digital transformation & Cybersecurity being the top agenda for many organisation, staying relevant in the career progression with new skills and experience are vital.

Strengthen the professional relationships & Presentation skills: Good professional interactions and presentation skills with clients and co-workers leave a positive impact on performance. Confidence builds with professional knowledge gained and improving on the vocabulary to convey the message in the precise context. Being an IT professional, conveying the message to non-technical audiences will be vital and comes with significant practice and experience.

Attain higher job grade: The ultimate goal of many professionals is to climb the career ladder by demonstrating the knowledge and skills. Promotion at work will bring more significant benefits to both personal and professional attributes.

Programming (Week 3-4)

Key learnings of the week are to attain knowledge on components of software engineering, programming trends. Programming module provided proper focus on Algorithms, Psuedocode and Programming languages. The learnings are proved by developing pseudocode for consensus algorithm and be able to review other colleagues pseudocode of numbers and word search. This allowed not only develop pseudocode for a specific problem and also able to review other colleagues pseudocode and provide constructive feedback.

Besides, as a part of the Week 3-4 assignment provided hands-on ability to install Scratch tool and code simple programs using the Scratch tool for submission

Data (Week 5)

Key learnings from the week are to attain knowledge of database design and management, data warehousing, big data analytics. During the week the focus is to analyse the fundamental concepts and elements of data structures, Recommend data structure appropriate to specific situations, infer the information from databases, given specific data characteristics and data access conditions and finally to evaluate the appropriate use of different data types of data solutions.

Submitted a discussion post on Quantity and Quality of data, summarising importance of data in digital transformation. Also submitted an assignment that illustrates the concepts of data visualisation, primary functions of data visualisation tool such as Tableau and the case studies of Wells Fargo and BNP Paribas

Software/Systems Development (Week 6)

Key learnings from the week are to analyse an issue related to computer networks, Evaluate the potential for using a diversity of approaches for developing and managing Enterprise-wide systems and Identify the potential security challenges associated with the global deployment of Enterprise-wide technologies,

During the week posted initial discussion post on challenges and opportunities associated with an organisation’s decision to allow personal BYOD in their enterprise technological environment with examples of personal experience. Also submitted an assignment on SME organisational context to assess the suitability of cloud-based or SaaS type services and three general services provided by cloud-based Saas Vendors

IT & Cyber Risk Management (Week 7-8)

Key learnings from the week 7 are to Identify, with examples, the key components associated with IT Security Risk, Critically evaluate the approaches typically used when developing an IT Security management and Analyse the role of IT Security policies and procedures to mitigate potential problems associated with deploying and supporting a diverse set of technologies in Enterprise-wide systems. In week 8, Identify, with examples, the types of threats associated specifically with Cyber Security and their potential impact on Enterprise-Wide systems, Critically assess the merits of implementing a specific set of policies and procedures to mitigate Cyber Security threats and finally evaluate the components typically associated with Cyber Security, when incorporated within an organisation’s IT Security Risk Management Strategy

During the week 7 posted initial discussion post on Risk management priorities from personal experience and week eight posted Cyber Security design in the Global setting. Also submitted an assignment on developing an IT Security risk management strategy and Developing an IT Cyber Security Risk Management

Conclusion

Continuous learning is vital in the age of digital transformation and to meet the professional goal to “Expand professional knowledge to play a leadership role in Cybersecurity”. Regardless of the job demands, there needs to be specific time allocated in daily routine to ensure there is continuous learning.