Computer Engineering
Senior Pre-Thesis and Pre-Project
Project and Report Requirements
The goal of this aspect of the class is to document your work in a way
that is suitable for publication. The proposal, reviews, and reports
should build upon each other incrementally until the final report is
done.
This reporting is not a substitute for a good lab
notebook!
Your report must be written in latex. You will need to turn in the latex
source, bibliography, and pdf file. The report must be written
using an IEEE two column format suitable for a conference or journal paper.
The proposal will logically contain two parts:
- A technical paper that you could publish in a workshop that is
missing the technical body of the paper.
- Proposal design and implementation details. If this is carried
out as described it will result in the technical body of the paper
next semester.
Presentations and written documents will be graded as follows:
Content | 50%
|
Clarity | 20%
|
Organization | 10%
|
Conciseness | 10%
|
Writing and Presentation quality | 10%
|
Refer to the proposal anatomy and
proposal writing presentations
for more details on what is expected in each section of the report and
presentation.
Initial Project Proposal and Presentation
The proposal should be no more than one page and the initial presentation
will not need slides. Discuss and motivate your project in a very short
pitch as if the class were venture capital investors who may invest in your
project.
The following will be part of your initial proposal. This will be
included in the full technical paper that is prepared by the end of
the semester:
- Title information (title of project, group members, affiliation)
- Abstract (brief summary of project and deliverables your
mother could understand)
- First half of the Introduction. Include the motivation but
not any related background work up to this point.
Also include:
- Scope of the project, design approach, and estimate of design size
- Estimate of the tasks and milestones mapped to team members
with target completion dates
Intermediate Proposal and Presentation
The proposal should be approximately 2 to 4 pages and the presentation
ten minutes.
At this stage you should have studied and refined your project to the
point where you have a better background, understanding of the tasks
and scope, well defined interfaces, delivery dates, and risks. This
report will add to the previous report and focus on risks, interfaces,
and roles of the team members.
You will continue to complete your "technical paper" part by adding:
- Complete introduction
- Background (related work and references)
- Proposed work
Include a very clear description of
your baseline deliverables and stretch goals. This will define
how you will be graded next semester!
- Project Demonstration
- Initial bibliography
You will also add details to the "proposal" part showing that you
understand the problem and have a maturing plan for completion by
including:
- Project Tasks
- What components will be purchased and those to be built
- Required Resources
- Task Interfaces
- Testing and integration strategy
- Schedule and Milestones
- Preliminary risk assessment (mainly note issues you feel have
yellow or red risk levels and mitigation plan)
- Preliminary parts list, both software and hardware (no vendor
information required at this point)
Final Proposal and Presentation
This should be a mature proposal that you should be able to take to a
boss at work, venture capitalists, etc. Your proposal will also
define the contract for your grade next semester based on the
deliverables you claim you will complete.
The final proposal will contain approximately 5 to 8 pages and the final
presentation will be approximately 15 minutes.
The technical paper will be improved by adding:
- The summary of what you expect to show
The technical proposal aspect will be improved:
- Complete parts list with vendor name and information
- List of mentors and other resources
- Full risk assessment and mitigation plan
- Final milestones assigned to team members
- Current status of the project - any engineering deliverables
so far
- Proposal summary including any lessons learned up to this
point - either management, team, or engineering.
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