Final Year Projects

Emmet Cauleld May 23, 2003

i This document is Copyright (C) Emmet Cauleld 1998-2003. All rights reserved. License is hereby granted for unlimited non-commercial distribution. Commercial reproduction in any form is prohibited.

Preface
This book is aimed at students preparing nal-year project reports. The general principles are applicable to theses at all levels. Some elements of this book are specic to the School of Computing at Dublin Institute of Technology. I have written this for the benet of my own project students. It is based on a document that I wrote in 1998 for my project students of the day. The reason for writing this is to recommend practices to students that, if followed, will make them more likely to get the mark that they think that they deserve rather than a nasty shock. For the sake of clarity, throughout this document, the singular imports the plural, the masculine imports the feminine, and vice-versa in other words, the author should be taken to include the possibility of multiple authors and he should be taken to include she and her to include him. This document is informative rather than normative. This document was produced in the hope that it might be useful, but it is not sanctioned by Dublin Institute of Technology or by the School of Computing in any way.

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Contents
Preface ii

I
1

Matters of Fact
R les o 1.1 Overview . . . . . . . . 1.2 The Student . . . . . . . 1.3 The Supervisor . . . . . 1.3.1 As a Consultant . 1.3.2 As an Invigilator 1.3.3 As the Marker . 1.4 The Second Reader . . . 1.5 The Project Coordinator 1.6 The External Examiner . 1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2 2 2 3 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 8 10 11 12 12 12 13 13 14 15 15 15

Academic Issues 2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Levels of Plagiarism . . . . 2.2.2 Tolerance of Plagiarism . . 2.3 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Purpose of Citations . . . . 2.3.3 Meaning of Citations . . . . 2.3.4 Academic Epistemology . . 2.3.5 Second-Hand References 2.3.6 Misconceptions Dismissed . 2.4 Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4.1 Critical Thought . . . . . . 2.4.2 Organised Thought . . . . . 2.4.3 Academic Rigour . . . . . . 2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Deliverables 3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Final Project Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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CONTENTS 3.2.1 Impact . . 3.2.2 Format . . Final Presentation . 3.3.1 Impact . . 3.3.2 Format . . Interim Report . . . Interim Presentation Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

iv 15 16 16 16 17 17 17 18

3.3

3.4 3.5 3.6

II
4

Recommendations
Project Execution 4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 General Advice . . . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Aim High . . . . . . . . . 4.2.2 Get to Work . . . . . . . . 4.2.3 Write Up Early . . . . . . 4.2.4 Get a Notebook . . . . . . 4.2.5 Use Your Supervisor . . . 4.3 Project Planning . . . . . . . . . . 4.3.1 Be Realistic About Time . 4.3.2 Draft A Plan Early . . . . 4.3.3 Revise The Plan Regularly The Project Report 5.1 Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 What to Include . . . . . 5.1.2 What to Omit . . . . . . 5.2 Handling References . . . . . . 5.2.1 Presentation Conventions 5.2.2 Online Sources . . . . . 5.3 Document Preparation . . . . . 5.3.1 Choose Software . . . . 5.3.2 Producing PDFs . . . . 5.3.3 Document Structure . . 5.3.4 Document Style . . . . . The Perfect Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part I

Matters of Fact

Chapter 1

R les o
1.1 Overview

In this chapter, the r les of the various parties that are involved, directly or indirectly, o in a nal year project are enumerated and explained. The marking process is outlined and explained with reference to these r les. o

1.2

The Student

The student is the protagonist in the story of his own project and how his project report comes to be. Acknowledged minor assistance and cited references aside, the project deliverables are expected to be completely the work of the student alone. The student is additionally responsible for: Project planning and meeting deadlines All aspects of research Maintaining contact with the supervisor Preparing and presenting deliverables Basically, the responsibility for the project rests solely with the student.

 CHAPTER 1. ROLES

1.3

The Supervisor

The supervisor may be a permanent member of staff or an external supervisor. Her r le o is threefold. She: Functions as a consultant Functions as an invigilator Grades the project at the end

1.3.1

As a Consultant

From the perspective of the student, the supervisors r le is advisory. The supervisor is o not your mammy she will not do the academic equivalent of spoonfeeding, holding your hand, or changing your nappy. In particular, the supervisor will not: Pursue students who miss meetings Plan projects for students Write parts of projects Get into the nitty-gritty of an implementation Usually, your project supervisor will render assistance above and beyond the call of duty by recommending books and papers, advising on the content and structure of deliverables, and occasionally may cast an experienced eye over a difcult problem at any level of detail. The project supervisor is not, necessarily, an expert in the subject areas of the projects that she supervises. She is there to offer general assistance on how to go about research, development, and writing up. She will, however, usually know someone who is expert in the eld if your supervisor recommends that you talk to Bob about this problem, you would do well to heed her advice.

1.3.2

As an Invigilator

The supervisor also invigilates the conduct of your project, in much the same way as exam-room invigilators. A student who misses project meetings and appears weak throughout the year, but produces a near-perfect project will, undoubtedly, have his project investigated thoroughly for possible plagiarism.

 CHAPTER 1. ROLES

1.3.3

As the Marker

The supervisor is the person responsible for recommending a mark for your project at the end of the year. She is severely constrained by the marking scheme, consistency with other projects, the views of the second reader and project coordinator, and the authoratative position of the external examiner. Any of the other parties may dispute the mark awarded by the supervisor. In general, the supervisor proposes a nal mark to the second reader who will either agree or disagree. If there is disagreement, the two will collaborate to reach a consensus on the mark. The proposed mark is forwarded to the project coordinator who reviews the mark to ensure consistency in marking across all projects. He may ask the supervisor and second reader to revise the mark upward or downward to ensure consistency and fairness.

1.4

The Second Reader

The second reader is an impartial judge. His bases for judgement are the project deliverables alone. He neither knows, nor cares, about the work that has been done during the year he is solely concerned with results. The second reader and the supervisor will generally agree a range of marks that is substantiated by the deliverables. Whether the nal mark falls at the upper or lower end of this range will be determined by the supervisors assessment of extra-deliverable elements such as work during the year.

1.5

The Project Coordinator

Fairness and equity are taken very seriously two students that do equivalent projects should receive equal marks. Basically, then, the project coordinator is responsible for ensuring fairness. The project coordinator will attend all project demonstrations, and will form a rough view on the mark that might be awarded to each project in the light of all of the projects that he has seen. He may ask for an explanation as to why a particular project has received a mark that is at odds with his expectations. He may examine projects with marks that appear to him inconsistent in greater detail. Where a supervisor and a second reader strongly disagree and cannot reach consensus, the project coordinator performs an arbitratratory r le. o

 CHAPTER 1. ROLES

1.6

The External Examiner

The external examiners are, in effect, auditors hired by the Institute to ensure that marks awarded are consistent with the qualication in theory, an honours degree awarded by any institution should be consistent with those awarded by other institutions. The external examiners will randomly select a number of projects and will review them thoroughly. If any projects have received excessively high, or excessively low, marks, they will conduct a more thorough examination. The recommendations of the external examiners are, in effect, binding, since it would be catastrophic to the reputation of the Institute for the external examiners to return an unfavourable verdict it would be the academic equivalent of the Enron scandal. While a particular mark might be discussed with the external examiners and agreement is usually reached, their word is nal.1

1.7

Summary

In this chapter, the r les of the people who are involved in a project were explained in o some detail. The process of grading a project was explained with reference to these o r les. You, and you alone, are responsible for your project from beginning to end. Your grade is not arbitrary. All parties involved in grading your project are subject to constraints, checks, and balances and must be able to justify their position.

1 Personally,

I have had external examiners overrule a project mark that they thought to be overly gener-

ous.

Chapter 2

Academic Issues
2.1 Overview

A project report, thesis or manual1 is an academic document. There are requirements that it must meet that are particular to academia and are not, typically, found in other kinds of documents. An honours degree is supposed to indicate a certain level of maturity in thinking and conduct. Accordingly, there are further implicit and explicit expectations of student projects. In this chapter, academic requirements surrounding the related issues of plagiarism, references, citations, and bibliographies are discussed and explained. Fundamental expectations of students at degree level are outlined.

2.2

Plagiarism

Simply put, plagiarism is claiming that something is your own work when it is not. Within the academic community, plagiarism is regarded as theft. Indeed, it is not going too far to say that the wider community probably has greater respect and tolerance for thieves than the academic community has for plagiarists. Within the academic research community, it is not uncommon to hear researchers joke that they would rather be hanged for axemurdering their granny than be even accused of plagiarism. The reason for this is that the academic system functions on reputation and due credit. Would you be happy for one of your fellow students to see your assignment, spot something really great in it, and proceed to incorporate your original idea into his assignment without your permission and without giving you the credit that you deserve?
1 the

traditional term in DIT

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

2.2.1

Levels of Plagiarism

There are, of course, different levels of plagiarism direct copying is at the serious end of the scale whilst failing to reference a source accurately is less serious. Equally, copying a major project is more serious than copying a minor assignment just as armed robbery of a bank is more serious than shoplifting.

Inadequate Referencing If your plagiarism falls into the category of inadequate referencing rather than outright theft of intellectual property, you will probably just lose a lot of marks silently, rather than face disciplinary action. Inadequate referencing is the academic equivalent of leaving the shop without paying. The difference is that walking out of a shop without paying is the product of forgetfulness, whilst inadequate referencing is the product of laziness and represents a choice on the part of the student Im not going to bother referencing because its too much work2 .

2.2.2

Tolerance of Plagiarism

The level of tolerance of plagiarism varies from school to school, from lecturer to lecturer, and from project to project. For example, most lecturers tacitly tolerate some level of plagiarism in minor assignments although it may be an individual assignment that youre supposed to do on your own, we know that people help each other out. Thats OK provided that it doesnt go too far and become copying.
Aside: At nal-year project level, if I suspect plagiarism, I will go to extraordinary lengths to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt and will then prosecute the matter to the maximum extent possible under academic regulations. I have, in the past, written software to analyze minor software assignments to ag potentially copied assignments, examined the agged assignments in detail, and awarded zero to over half of the class.

2.3

References

For some reason, the issue of what to reference seems to be the bane of project students. Here, the record is set straight!
2 Personally,

I would penalise inadequate referencing very severely.

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

2.3.1

Terminology

A source is a single article, academic paper, a book, or other document from which information has been obtained. A reference is a piece of information that allows a source to be unambiguously identied by the reader (in order that he can follow the reference to the source). References appear only in the bibliography. A label is the number or other identier (like Murphy88) that uniquely identies the reference both in the bibliography and in citations. A citation is the short tag that appears after a word, statement, or paragraph that is based on material from a referenced source. By convention, citations take the form of the label and, usually3 , a page number, range, or other identier that allows the reader to locate the part of the source that is relevant to the citation. The bibliography, or table of references is the list of references that appears, usually, in the backmatter[5, p.37] of a book or at the end of an article or paper.

2.3.2

Purpose of Citations

A citation serves one or more, usually all simultaneously, of the following purposes: to give credit where its due to support an assertion that you, the author, are making to identify material that the author is not claiming as original to allow the reader to nd out more about a particular topic The basic principle is that anything that is not well known and is not attributed to another person (by a citation) is the original work of the author (you). This is dangerous for the unwary (or just plain lazy) student because the default condition is that the author is claiming credit for originality. In other words, if you fail to include a citation on something that is not well known but is the work of another, you are guilty of plagiarism (see section 2.2.1) by default.

2.3.3

Meaning of Citations

First of all, you are expected to understand, and be able to explain, the source for the citations in your project report in context. In other words, your supervisor and secondreader are perfectly within their rights to quiz you on your citations.
3 The

strategy for handling online sources (see Section 5.2.2 on page 30) is a particular exception

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

The positioning and detail given in a citation (review the denition of citation in section 2.3.1 if necessary) are signicant in terms of the range of applicability of the citation and the implied assertion that you are making about your knowledge of the source.

Citation Position It will usually be clear from context what text in the project report is intended to be covered by a citation. In general, citations should be placed where it will offer the least resistance to the ow of thought. The best location is just before a mark of punctuation. [5, p.644]. Although not a hard and fast rule, in general, citations are placed after the span of text4 to which they apply. Very often, there is a choice of places to put the citation and where it goes depends more on the wording of a sentence than on any rule. Some examples of positioning of citations and what the reader would infer, in absence of disambiguating context, about the span of text to which they apply is are listed in Table 2.1. Position of Citation In the middle of a sentence, after a word or term delineated by a typographical convention or quotationmarks At the end of a sentence before the full-stop In the middle of a sentence before a comma At the end of a paragraph, after the full-stop that ends the paragraph Span of Applicability The preceding word or term

The preceding sentence terminated by the full-stop following the citation The part of the sentence before the comma The preceding paragraph

Table 2.1: Example Citation Positions

Citation Detail The amount of detail that you provide in a citation is very signicant. There are two basic reasons for this.
citation may apply to anything from a single word to an entire paragraph. The term span of text is introduced to cover these possibilities.
4A

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

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First of all, a citation is expected to be strictly relevant to the span of text to which it applies. If you cite one page of a book at the end of a sentence, the source page must contain material exactly relevant to the sentence. Citations of entire books or websites are usually worthless5 . Secondly, in citing a source, you are implicitly claiming to have some knowledge of the source you cannot cite what you do not understand. The amount of detail that you provide in the citation indicates the level of knowledge that you claim of the source. The basic rules are summarised in Table 2.2 which shows sample citations (in both author-date style and numbered style) and the knowledge that you are claiming according to the level of detail. Example Citation (Murphy98, p.53) or [1,p.53] [2] or (Jones99) [1,pp.43-49] Implied claim of understanding Page 53 of the source and enough of the surrounding pages to understand the material on page 53 thoroughly. The source of in its entirety Everything from page 43 to 49 inclusive Table 2.2: Citation Detail

2.3.4

Academic Epistemology

The academic community basically acknowledges the existence of three broad classes of information: That which is well known That which is the work of a person who is not the author That which is the original work of the author

Well Known The concept of something being well known is easy to understand. For example, d = 2r does not require a citation because it is elementary mathematics no reader could possibly believe that the author is claiming to have invented the equation! Whilst, in general, there is no such thing as over referencing, learning ancient Greek and studying Euclid in order to make sure that he gets due credit for every equation that he may have originated in your computer graphics assignment is excessive.
5 Of course, there are contexts where it is appropriate to cite an entire book, but relevant page numbers should be included where possible

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES The Work of Another

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The concept of something being the work of another is equally easy to understand if its not your work, then it must be someone elses! In order to avoid claiming credit where you should not, you must go to great lengths to reference exhaustively. Comprehensive referencing adds value to a document because it provides the reader with starting points for further research. As you go through your project, it is a good idea to keep notes of where you read particular things books, journals and periodicals, websites, etc. In general, any printed matter that you read is a candidate for inclusion in your table of references. If another person that you talk to (including someone, say, on an Internet mailing list) helps you out signicantly, it is conventional to give her credit too by including her name in your acknowledgements. Too often, students acknowledge their mammies and girlfriends over people whove had a direct personal input into the project.

Your Original Work Everything that is neither cited nor well-known is assumed to be your own original work. Although this comes as a surprise to some students, its just the way it is and you have to deal with it. In practice, what this means is that you must be rigourous and punctilious about referencing if you are to avoid being guilty of plagiarism.

2.3.5

Second-Hand References

One of the implications of having to understand citations in context (see Section 2.3.3 on page 8) is that you must exercise caution (and follow the correct protocol) when using secondary sources. Where one author, Bob, quotes (and cites) another author, Alice, and you want to cite the quotation from Alices work, Bobs work is said to be a secondary source. Your reference to Alices work is second-hand in the sense that you have never seen Alices work directly, only Bobs extract from it. The correct procedure is either: To get Alices original article and read it yourself To create a seperate reference for Alices work, citing it in the main text. In the reference, provide the details for Alices work, saying quoted in followed by a citation of Bobs work.[5, p.635] Failure to adhere to these guidelines (by citing Alices work as if it were a primary

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

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source) can give the impression that you are conversant with Alices work when, in fact, you are not. You are also being unfair to Bob in failing to credit him with nding an extract so good that you want to use it.

2.3.6

Misconceptions Dismissed

It is a common misconception amongst students that they should not over reference for fear of their project supervisor or second reader thinking that their contribution is small. Similarly, students fail to observe the correct protocol for dealing with secondary sources (see section 2.3.5), believing that it makes them look bad for not following up the reference. In both cases, the all-too-common perception is completely backwards in actual fact, readers will think Wow, this is well referenced! and not Theres very little new in this. You are not expected to do anything fundamentally original in your project report it is a nal year project report, not a doctoral dissertation. Comprehensive referencing: Shows that you have done your homework Adds great value to a document by providing a starting point for the reader for further research.

2.4
2.4.1

Expectations
Critical Thought

There are certain expectations of students at degree level. Chief among these is that the student demonstrate a capacity for critical thought. The capacity for critical thought is evidenced by rational choice and objective judgement. What this means, in practice, is that throughout your project and in your project report, you must make choices and justify them with reference to research and, where necessary, experiments that you have conducted. If you expect to do well, you cannot make arbitrary choices. Secondly, you must weigh what you read objectively and ask yourself whether it is reasonable. Everything written is not true. Students have an alarming tendency to believe single-source material, particularly from books. In your project demonstration, you will be asked why did you do it that way instead of this way and you must be able to justify your choice this is the panels way of verbally examining your capacity for critical thought. Your capacity for objective judgement is evidenced by your evaluation of the work of

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

13

yourself and others. Your awareness of assumptions that you have made, the authoritativeness of your references, and the nature of your conclusions are good indicators of your capacity for objective judgement. For example, if your project is poor compared to similar projects or products, but your project report is self-laudatory, you will have demonstrated an inability to judge your own work in context.
Aside: This is the reason why, historically, I have asked students to review possible implementation languages and platforms for the software elements of their projects rather than just deciding, arbitrarily, to implement their projects in Java or VB or whatever. There is a whole universe of languages, operating systems, and hardware platforms that are suited to different applications. Equally, I insist that students step back from their project and evaluate where they went wrong, what they would do differently, their successes and failures, and how their project might be improved and document these in their project report.

2.4.2

Organised Thought

Students are expected to think and behave in an organised fashion. To your supervisor, organised thought is evidenced in a methodical and organised approach to project work and a mature attitude toward planning and execution. To your second reader, organised thought is evidenced in the structure and content of your project report and the clarity of your writing style.

2.4.3

Academic Rigour

Academic rigour is, basically, honesty and the application of the scientic principle and healthy skepticism! In essence, you should not assume that anything is true unless there is strong evidence to support it. When asked how he had originated the Theory of Special Relativity, Einstein famously replied, I merely ignored an axiom blind faith in the written word is the enemy of critical thought and academic rigour. Giving, and claiming, credit where it is due, via referencing, is the other important constituent of academic rigour honesty. Academic rigour is evidenced by demonstrating awareness of assumptions that you have made by stating these assumptions. You must use objective judgement to identify implicit assumptions and either eliminate them, by nding supporting evidence (preferably), or make them explicit by stating them. Academic rigour is further evidenced by exhaustive referencing with multiple sources for important points that underpin your project a project cannot depend on the veracity of a statement that you read on a bubblegum card.

CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES

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2.5

Summary

In this chapter, the concept of plagiarism was explained in detail. The reasons for referencing were enumerated and explained. The basic rule of referencing was stated: If a statement is not your own original work and it is not well-known, then it should be followed by a citation.

Various overlapping and inter-related expectations of honours degree students were enumerated, dened, and explained in terms of how they are evidenced in project deliverables.

Chapter 3

Deliverables
3.1 Overview

This chapter deals with the mandatory deliverables of your project. In the case of each of the interim report, nal report, and their associated presentations, the deliverable is described in terms of its broad impact on marking and a general description of the format in which it is expected to be presented.

3.2
3.2.1

Final Project Report

Impact

Of all project deliverables, the project report is by far the most important. The reasons for this are that: It is the canonical permanent record of the project It is the basis for about 90% of marks It is the sole basis for examination by external examiners The Institute must be able to stand over the project and the grade that has been awarded to it for all time. In general, your project supervisor, your second-reader, the Exam Board, the Institute, and the external examiners will be eager to give you the highest mark that is justied by your project report. We love to see people do well, and we hate being unable to award a pass.

15

CHAPTER 3. DELIVERABLES

16

Crummy project report, crummy mark. Good project report, good mark. It really is almost that simple. It is possible to do a great project and get a bad mark by making a pigs breakfast of the project report. It is not your supervisors fault, nor your second-readers, and they are not out to get you if you get a bad mark it is simply that you have left them with no choice. On the upside, it is possible to get a good mark for a mediocre project by doing an exemplary project report.

3.2.2

Format

You are required to present your nal report electronically as a PDF document. How you produce this document is completely at your discretion and it is your responsibility to select tools that allow you to prepare a well-presented document as a PDF. Contrary to popular belief, it is the PDF version of the document, not the printed and bound one, that counts. It is utterly pointless to submit a bound version that differs from the PDF it will be ignored. Excuses for PDF documents that look like they were prepared by a drunken cat traipsing all over the keyboard (frequently along the lines of It printed out OK from Word, but the PDF wouldnt come out right) will be treated with the contempt that they deserve.

3.3
3.3.1

Final Presentation
Impact

The nal presentation at the end of the year, usually around Easter, is more important than you might think. It is the rst time that your second-reader really gets an opportunity to get a avour for your project. It is the responsibility of the project coordinators to ensure that equal projects receive equal marks. Their judgement is based primarily on the presentation. If your presentation is very good, the coordinators are less likely to query a high mark than if it is poor. Equally, a very good presentation of a project that gets a low mark is likely to be queried, ensuring balance. That being said, everyone involved is aware that some people are just better than others at presentations. You should be nervous, but not petried. Allowances are made for nervousness on the day. Indeed, the presentation is probably more important than its weighting in the marking scheme suggests since the old adage is true rst impressions do last. In short, it is very much in your interest to make sure that your presentation is as good

CHAPTER 3. DELIVERABLES as you can possibly make it.

17

3.3.2

Format

The presentation is your opportunity to show off for 30 minutes or so. At minimum, there will be your project supervisor, second-reader, and at least one project coordinator. Other lecturers may sit in if theyre interested in your project, usually only one or two.1 First, you will give a presentation. A digital projector and PC with presentation software including Microsoft PowerPoint and Acrobat Reader will be made available. I will personally make a PC with StarOfce Impress available given notice. During your presentation, the lecturers may interrupt and request clarication on any point that they do not understand. At this stage, lecturers basically behave the way they wish students would in class! If your project has an element that can be demonstrated, such as a program, you will proceed to a demonstration. During the demonstration, the lecturers will ask further questions and will probably request demonstration of aspects of the functionality that you didnt expect. You will be asked questions about how the demonstrable element operates. It is the responsibility of everyone in the room to ensure that you understand what you are presenting. This may make it seem adversarial and daunting. If you are prepared to be comprehensively grilled by a panel of experts, youll get a pleasant surprise. If, on the other hand, youre expecting to get away with presenting ill-considered tosh, you wont enjoy the reception that you get. Remember the 5 Ps proper preparation prevents poor performance.

3.4

Interim Report

The interim report, due in early December, is a free-form report that documents your intentions for the project and work-to-date. Its purpose is to get you to start working on your project early on in the year and to discourage procrastination.

3.5

Interim Presentation

The interim presentation, performed in December, is a short presentation with a similar audience to the nal presentation. It allows your plans and work-to-date to be assessed roughly.
1 In some institutions, attendance by the rest of the class is mandatory and it is usual for most of the faculty to attend. I favour this scheme and sit in on as many projects as possible each year.

CHAPTER 3. DELIVERABLES

18

For many students, it is a baptism of re because they are not expecting the barrage of questions that they invariably receive from the panel. Its basic purpose is to identify students who may be having difculty or may have got off to a slow start, and to give the student some idea of what to expect in the nal presentation.

3.6

Summary

This section enumerated the project deliverables and discussed the format and impact of each one. In order of importance, the deliverables are: 1. The project report a PDF document 2. The nal presentation about 30 minutes, around Easter 3. The interim presentation about 15 minutes, early December 4. The interim report free format, early December

Part II

Recommendations

19

Chapter 4

Project Execution
4.1 Overview

This chapter gives advice to the student on project execution tips and tricks on how to choose a project manage its conduct to maximise the chances of success.

4.2

General Advice

My basic advice to project students can be summarised as aim high, get to work, write up early. The basic motivation for this years of experience and the famous observation that more software projects go awry for lack of calendar time than for all other reasons combined[1]. One interesting observation is that WMT students have, traditionally, wiped the oor with the WSAD students in projects. This is partly due to the fact that the WMT students have the advantage of already having done a project and learned (usually the hard way) that their supervisor told them the truth at the beginning of the year, You do not have a lot of time, much less than you think.

4.2.1

Aim High

Choose a project that exercises your brain and is ambitious for you. Dont choose a project that you think that you can do easily unless your goal is just to scrape a pass. Dont be afraid of being over-ambitious if you have been, youll nd out very quickly and narrow the scope to something manageable by the time your interim presentation comes around. 20

CHAPTER 4. PROJECT EXECUTION

21

In the marking scheme, there is the joint concept of Completeness and Complexity the completeness and complexity of a project are considered together if your project is very complex, it is not expected to be very complete; but if your project is easy, it had better be near-perfect. I am bemused, year on year, by students who chose blatantly trivial software projects. These projects have tended, over the years, to fall into avour of the month categories it was Access databases with VB front-ends for a few years, then web front-ends became de rigeur, then e-learning projects. Similarly, the wafy Research into ... projects have tended to be as weak as the programming skills of the students who choose them. Occasionally, theres a cracking research project, but this is the exception rather than the rule, and is usually the product of genuine interest and not a desire to avoid code.

4.2.2

Get to Work

The vast majority of students faff around doing very little until well after Christmas, wasting half of the project time. They then panic and spend the rest of the year reghting from one assignment to the next. The best marks are obtained by stunningly bright students who can afford to waste a lot of time early on (one of these every few years), and lesser mortals who get stuck into their projects in early November, manage their time, and work consistently. Arrogance and laziness are the enemies of good marks.

4.2.3

Write Up Early

It will take you three solid weeks to write a decent project report if you have all of your ducks in a line. This is like the universal constant of gravitation it changes for nobody. If you leave it to the last week, and are still trying to nd references, your project report will stink and youll be lucky to scrape a pass. Sorry to be so blunt, but dont say you werent warned.

4.2.4

Get a Notebook

The rst thing that you should do is get a nice A4-size hardback notebook and use it throughout the year to: Make notes on what you read and where youve read it Bring to your project meetings

CHAPTER 4. PROJECT EXECUTION Write down goals from week to week Stuff random notes into

22

If you do it right, youll be able to write your project report with reference to the notebook rather than having to revisit every article you ever read at the end of the year to locate citations. Throughout the year, it will function as an aid to project management and help you enforce some kind of self-discipline.

4.2.5

Use Your Supervisor

It is your responsibility to schedule project meetings with your supervisor at an agreed time. Your supervisor may mandate a particular time, particularly if she is an external supervisor. Attend your project meetings. Be on time. Use your project supervisor well. You have one Get Out of Jail Free card that allows you to cancel a meeting at short notice, but no shows are strictly forbidden and may land you in trouble, particularly if your supervisor is external. Specically, use your project supervisor and your (usually) weekly meetings to set goals for next meeting that contribute to achieving your overall goals and meeting your project deadlines in a realistic way. It is much easier to have something concrete done for a pseudo-deadline next week, enforced by your supervisor, than to have something ephemeral done for a real deadline next April. At minimum, you should tell your supervisor every week: What you have done in the last week. Whether your work over the previous week puts you ahead of, or behind, schedule. What you intend to do in the next week. How your intentions for next week contribute to your overall goal or get you back on schedule.

4.3

Project Planning

Project planning is your responsibility. Your supervisor will not plan the project for you. She will be happy to assist you by reviewing work done and setting goals if you ask. If you really want to, then use a formal planning methodology and produce PERT charts, GANTT charts, project planning matrices, and all that jazz, but this is by no means mandatory.

CHAPTER 4. PROJECT EXECUTION

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At minimum, estimate the amount of time that you can spend on your project each week. Be realistic you wont get much done over Christmas and there will be weeks where assignments eat into your project time. Estimate the amount of time that you need to spend on the different phases of your project and try to t it to the available time. Review the estimates each week in the light of what you have achieved that week. Get your supervisor to help. Use the deadlines for the deliverables as aids to discipline.

4.3.1

Be Realistic About Time

For the purposes of the current illustration, let us assume that the total project timescale, from assignment of your supervisor to submission of the nal report, runs from midNovember to mid-April, or 5 calendar months. There are, on average, 4.35 weeks in a calendar month so you have a total of (rounding up) 22 weeks. You will not get much done over Christmas1 , so you can immediately strike 3 weeks now you have 19 weeks. Being realistic, there will be (at least) 3 weeks where assignments are more pressing. Realistically, you have 16 weeks. If there are 16 normal weeks, then for every hour-per-week that you spend on your project, you get the equivalent of two 8-hour working days. In other words, even if you spend 6 hours per week on your project, by the time that it is completed you will only have spent the equivalent of 12 full-time working days on it. Period Before Christmas After Christmas Total Weeks 4 12 16 Hours 24 72 96 Working Days 3 9 12

Table 4.1: Project Timescale

As you can see from Table 4.1, you do not have a lot of time. You must get the nger out in November, and not fart around until February.

4.3.2

Draft A Plan Early

If you write material for your project report as you go along and keep your notebook well (see page 21), you will spend the last 3 weeks of your project writing up, getting your project report proofread, incorporating changes, nding stray references, and preparing for your nal presentation.
1 In

7 years of supervising projects, I have never known a student to get anything done over Christmas.

CHAPTER 4. PROJECT EXECUTION

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Does that sound unreasonable? Remember, that it was assumed that youre only spending 6 hours per week on your project, so 3 weeks really means just a little more than two working days do you think that you can do everything in the preceding paragraph in two days? If not, you cannot do it in three weeks during term. This means that the total time for completion of the substantive work on your project is just 13 weeks (or about 10 working days) you need to be writing up in mid to late March thats just two months after Christmas.

Example For example, lets say that youre developing some software for your project. You adopt the view that, for a rough plan, a waterfall model view of your project will sufce. Your project consists of 6 phases: 1. Preliminary Research 2. Software Specication 3. Software Design 4. Software Coding 5. Software Testing 6. Project Write-Up Lets guess at how long each of these might take see Table 4.2. Remember that we are constrained by the fact that we have already determined that the total realistic project time is 16 weeks and it takes 3 weeks to write up. Phase Research Specication Design Coding Test Write-Up Total Weeks 3 1 5 2 2 3 16 Hours 18 6 30 12 12 18 96 Working Days 2.25 0.75 3.75 1.5 1.5 2.25 9

Table 4.2: Example Timetable

Dont get too caught up in the detail of Table 4.2 saying, My project isnt like that, or, I wouldnt spend that much time on design rearrange it, take time away from one thing and give it to another. Any way you cut it, you are hard-pressed for time even if you get to work immediately.

CHAPTER 4. PROJECT EXECUTION

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4.3.3

Revise The Plan Regularly

A plan is useless unless you use it. Note, very importantly, that I didnt say stick to it. Its not only OK, but essential, to revise your plan on an ongoing basis. The important thing is that your weekly work has direction that it contributes to meeting the overall goal. Your supervisor will be delighted to help you provide direction in your project work by monitoring your progress on a week-to-week basis. It is, however, important that you dont get caught up in the weekly goals and lose sight of the big picture. Your weekly goals must make a proportionate contribution to the overall project.

Chapter 5

The Project Report

5.1 Content

Very often, students ask How long should my project report be?. The answer is that it should be as long as necessary, but as short as possible. There should never be any need to resort to padding out your project report with wafe with a little thought and preparation, there is usually plenty of relevant, interesting information about your project that can be included.
Aside: The classic example is the (possibly apocryphal) story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhars Ph.D. thesis which, it is rumoured, was just 1 page long and contained the original derivation of the Chandrasekhar Limit for which he received the Nobel Physics Prize. For the curious, the Chandrasekhar Limit is the lower limit on the mass of a star that can collapse under its own gravity to form a singularity. If memory serves, the limit is about 1.5 solar masses, meaning that our sun could never become a black hole because it has insufcient mass.

5.1.1

What to Include

Blind Alleys Its OK to document blind alleys in the background and/or research areas of your project report. Very often, eliminating a useless avenue of exploration is as useful to the reader as nding a useful one.

Code Include your code as an appendix. If the code is automatically generated, it is more important to say how it was produced than to include the code itself. For example, if 26

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT

27

you have a code-generation utility, such as yacc, that produces code from some kind of input le (a grammar le in the case of yacc), the manually-written input le, and not prolic quantities of output, should be in the appendices. If you do include automatically generated code (in a situation where theres no other way to present it meaningfully), it is important that you identify it as being the output of a tool. The primary reason for this is that automatically generated code typically has no comments, or comments that are useless. You dont want someone reading your project report to think that youve written uncommented code. If you wrote the code, make sure that it is commented using appropriate conventions for the language in question (e.g. JavaDoc for Java, POD for Perl). Uncommented code will raise the hackles of any self-respecting programmer or lecturer.

Concise Technology Reviews Include concise technology reviews, as appendices, where these would be useful to the reader in understanding the nitty gritty of the project. If you are seeking to demonstrate your mastery of a technology, a concise, accurate appendix that hits the nail on the head proves that you have digested it. A rambling 42-page introductory novella will be skipped by the reader and taken as padding.

Comparative Studies By all means, include comparative studies of different technologies, languages, or tools. Indeed, you should justify the choices of language, platform, database, etc. that you make. However, make sure that you compare like with like. Each candidate in the study should be compared with respect to the same list of criteria. Very often students write a few rambling paragraphs on each candidate and then write on this basis I chose X, which is worse than useless. The correct procedure is to identify the criteria up front, why they are important, and then write about whether (or to what extent) each candidate fulls each individual criterion. You can then clearly justify a choice with reference to the criteria. In some cases, it might be appropriate to weight the criteria and compute a score. In other cases, there might be an overriding criterion, like availability.

5.1.2
Padding

What to Omit

Dont pad your project report. There are many different types of padding: Padding by general non-specic wafe there is no need to wax lyrical for 6

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT pages on the reasons why you chose this project.

28

Padding by excruciatingly detailed explanation I typed this le by rst hitting the backslash (\) key, then the c, h, a, p, t, e and r keys in that order, then I . . . Padding by unecessary introductions to technologies there is no need for 30page introductions to programming languages or technologies a 5-page appendix will usually do. Padding by cut & paste there is no need for the BNF grammar for XML in every project that contains a passing reference to XML. Of these, the unecessary introductions to technologies are, by far, the most common anyone reading your project will know that Java is object-oriented, and what all of XML, HTML, ERDs, UML, and so ad innitum are. There is absolutely no need for anything other than a few pages of cribsheet in the appendices and appropriate references for any technology. The only situation under which it is acceptable to include a description of a language, technology, or tool is in a comparative study leading to choice from such languages, technologies or tools.

Invective It doesnt happen very often, but unsubstantiated statements with attitude often say more about the author than the subject. If you dont want to use Java, for example, then list reasons. Better, do a comparative study with other languages. But dont dismiss it with Java is a load of !@*% or more polite equivalents. In short, your project report is supposed to consist of the reasoned, impartial determinations of an aspiring professional, not invective.

5.2
5.2.1

Handling References
Presentation Conventions

The presentation of both citations and references (see Section 2.3.1 on page 8) is, to a great degree, determined by the chosen style. In the sciences, there are two basic styles and a large number of variations on these. Although no particular style is mandated for your nal year project, you should adopt one of the standard styles. The two basic styles differ primarily in the nature of the labels (see Section 2.3.1 on page 8) that are used in citations and to identify references in the bibliography. These are:

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT The numbered style The author date style

29

Which style you choose is a matter of personal preference, but people do have strong views. The Chicago Manual of Style strongly advocates author-date style [5, p.640], whilst Patashnik1 makes convincing arguments for the numbered style [7, p.11].

Format of Citations Citations should appear in one of the two basic standard styles. Citations should, in general, include a page number or range of pages e.g. [1, p.45] or [2, pp.121-135]. There are, of course, situations where it is appropriate to cite an entire work when the source is very short; when the entire source is relevant to the span of text to which the citation applies; or when the reference itself contains a page range. As a general rule, however, the citation should be as specic as possible. As noted earlier (see Section 2.3.3 on page 9) , citations generally appear after the span of text to which they apply. In the numbered style, citations usually appear in brackets. In author-date style, citations normally appear in parentheses. There are two major variations on the author-date style which I will call full author-date style, in which the full names of authors are used, and shortened author-date style in which the authors name are shortened to three characters. Table 5.1 gives examples of citations in each style Feature Single author Style Full author-date Short author-date Numbered Full author-date Short author-date Numbered Full author-date Short author-date Numbered Example (Murphy, 1988, 209) (Mur88, 209) [6, p.209] (Smith and Jones, 1994, 100) (SJ94, 100) [7, p.100] (Beck et al., 1998, 50) (BBD+98, 50) [8, p.209]

Two authors

Many authors

Table 5.1: Example Citations

Table of References The references in the bibliography or table of references also differ somewhat from style to style. When publishing papers in academic journals, different organisations
1 Oren A Patashnik is the author of the BIBTEX package that is used to handle referencing in L TEX.

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT

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mandate different formats for the bibliography. The rules get very involved and detailed, and there are standard abbreviations for oft-cited publications. For a project report, while it is preferable that references adhere to one of the wellknown styles, the really important thing is that each reference is complete include all authors, publisher, date, and edition of books, volume and series numbers of magazines, etc. and consistent that the same information appears in the same order in each reference (e.g. all books list authors, then title, then publisher, then edition, then date). The idea is that a reader will be able to locate the source document unambiguously. Things get a little more complex when a reference is to something in a collection that has a lot of information in its own right, such as a paper in multi-volume conference proceedings. The general idea is to create two references, one to the paper, and one to the collection to which it belongs. The reference to the paper then identies that its in the collection by saying something like . . . in [22] where 22 is the label of the reference that describes the proceedings. Note that, in this case, the conference proceedings may never be directly cited in the project report. We wouldnt, however, create two entries for a well-known journal or magazine that can be described succinctly our reference might, instead, simply read: [15] J. Whittaker and S. Atkin Software Engineering is Not Enough, in IEEE Software, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 9299, Jul/Aug 2002. Further examples of references can be seen in the bibliography on page 39.

5.2.2

Online Sources

Referencing online sources deserves special mention because there are no well-established conventions for the appearance of citations and references. Equally, the transient nature of web documents raises other problems will the document still be there when someone follows the reference? Although there is an International Standard that attempts to address the issues surrounding citation of electronic documents [6], its unlikely that your software will support it fully, if at all [3]. A little crufting will probably be required. There are a couple of issues surrounding the use of online sources: There is a low barrier to entry to online publication. An online publication may not exist, or be different, tomorrow. Online publications dont have page numbers, so it can be difcult to narrow down the part of the publication that you wish to cite. These are the reasons that, in general, references to hard publications are preferable to sources on the web. Sometimes, however, theres simply no choice.

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT Low Barrier to Entry

31

Traditionally, the difculty and expense of getting a book published meant that a book from a reputable publisher was at least somewhat likely to be right2 , since it would usually have been reviewed by at least one technical editor. But no barrier at all exists to publishing online in short, any old fool can say what he likes online. What this means, in practice, is that the veracity of an online publication must be judged with extreme care. For example, consider two URLs that make some assertion about programming in Java: http://java.sun.com/ http://www.geocities.com/user?id=joeshmoe The former is likely to be correct, since it comes from Sun Microsystemss own Java site. The latter, on the other hand, may be the website of a very eminent Java expert, or it may be the website of a 12year old kid who knows little or nothing. In short, while you should always exercise care in accepting the veracity of any source, you should exercise particular caution with online documents.

Impermanence Dead links 404 Not Found

No Page Numbers Web pages dont have simple, sequential numbers that allow a short section of text to be identied in a citation. This is particularly the case with very long all in one documents. Equally, large collections of pages that form one logical entity, such as a FAQ, may be broken up into tiny web pages. In theory, you could break a URL in two the part that identies the whole and a fragment identier that identies the specic part that you wish to cite. You could then treat the whole as if it were a book, and the fragment identier as if it were a page, page range, or section number. The problem with this is that it leads to very ugly citations. The solution is to create a reference for the whole and separate references for each citation. In this case, the citation detail (see Section 2.3.3 on page 9) doesnt constrain the range of the source material that is relevant to the citation, but the reference does.3
2 Although 3 If

Ive seen some dreadful books, full of rubbish! youre unclear about the distinction between sources, references, and citations, see section 2.3.1 on

page 8

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT

32

This strategy is employed to manage two separate citations (relating to double-spacing and citing URLs) of the TEX Frequently Asked Questions in this document. See the bibliography on page 39.

5.3
5.3.1

Document Preparation
Choose Software

Choose software to prepare your project report and use it properly. Amongst your options are: A word-processor, such as Microsoft Word.
A A document preparation system, such as LTEX.

A technical document standard, such as DocBook.

A Aside: Personally, I use LTEX 2 for substantial documents. There are a number of reasons for this choice including high-quality output, easy mathematical typesetting, and the painless automation of cross-references and citations. Having previously lost substantial documents in word-processors, including having all of the equations (of which there were a great number) in my own nal year project simply vanish into thin air, I dont have much trust in Microsoft Word for large documents. That said, you may not be willing to invest the intellectual effort that it takes to learn how to use A a system like LTEX productively.

If you must insist on using a word-processor, use styles rather than randomly changing font attributes directly. This makes it much easier to change fonts later on if necessary.

5.3.2

Producing PDFs

Most modern tools are capable of producing PDF documents, either directly with Acrobat Distiller, or indirectly by printing to PostScript and converting to PDF using utilities like ps2pdf that comes with Aladdin Ghostscript. If youve ever wondered why two similar PDF documents differed radically in size, one being just a few tens of kB and another perhaps a few megabytes, the reason is often that the author of the smaller le was judicious and restrained in her choice of fonts. Adobes Acrobat Reader has 14 fonts built in, which they call the Base 14 fonts. These fonts include Times (serif), Helvetica (sans serif), and Courier (monospace). Using other fonts means that they have to be embedded in the PDF document, resulting in bloat.

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT

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A If you use LTEX and logical markup, choosing different families of fonts for different ouput media is trivial, allowing the best of both worlds.

5.3.3

Document Structure

We can divide a project report along the same standard lines as a book, or other substantial single-volume publication (based on [5, pp.34]): 1. Frontmatter (a) (b) (c) (d) Cover Page Abstract Acknowledgements Table of Contents

2. Mainmatter (a) Chapter 1 Introduction ... (n) Chapter N Conclusions 3. Backmatter (a) Appendices (b) Bibliography (c) Index There is no single best structure for your project report. Indeed, it is possible that there are a number of alternative structures that would work quite well. The variation in structure, however, occurs in the mainmatter in terms of the ordering and grouping of information. There are, of course, certain constraints whatever you decide to call them, you must always have an introduction at the beginning and your conclusions at the end.
Aside: I recommend a short introductory section at the beginning of each chapter and a short summary at the end of each chapter. These two are often quite similar, but serve to introduce (at the beginning) and consolidate (at the end) the information in the chapter.

The single best piece of advice for preparing your project report with a minimum of pain is: Write a detailed Table of Contents rst.

Quite simply, a well-thought out table of contents reduces the bulk of writing to a matter of lon na bearna4 , and eliminates a great deal of writing, rewriting, and moving
4 Fill

in the gaps

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT content around.

34

In writing your project report, make sure to take into account the recommendations on what to include and what not to include (see Section 5.1 on page 26) .

5.3.4

Document Style

There are two elements of style that relate to your project report typographic style (layout, fonts, etc.) and writing style (phraseology, grammar, punctuation, etc.)

Typographic Style If you stick to a standard typographic style, you need not let the issue concern you much. If, on the other hand, you elect to fooster around with fonts to try to turn your project report into a work of art, it becomes very important indeed. Your project report is in computing, not typography or design leave the owery doodles and calligraphic fonts for birthday cards. In response to the protestations of but that looks boring or I think my code looks nice in Zapf Chancery my reply is simple you are not a professional typographer and neither am I. There are well-established conventions and traditions based on hundreds of years of experience and research that tell us what makes a document easy-to-read. It is the height of arrogance to suppose that you know better. Your foostering around will probably look worse and not be as clear as the defaults that you started with. If youre interested in getting these details right, use a well-respected reference book like The Chicago Manual of Style [5] as a basis, but be aware of American stylistic bias. If you follow the following rules, however, you will avoid some of the worst, and most common, errors: Do not use underlining at all. Use a serif font (e.g. Times) in 1012 point Roman (upright, not bold or italic) for body text. Adjust the page width (at document level) to get an average of about 65 characters on a full line. Dont be mean with vertical whitespace. Use numbered lists only for lists where order is semantically signicant like the steps in a recipe. Use bulleted lists only for lists where order is not signicant like a list of ingredients. Dont shoe-horn information into tables inappropriately.

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT There are exactly three dots in an ellipsis, . . . , no more, no less. Set code in a monospace font (like Courier).

35

A If you use a document preparation system like LTEX, it takes considerable effort to get it badly wrong. If, on the other hand, you use a word-processor, you have a great deal of freedom to make a dogs dinner of your project report.

On Double Spacing The requirement for double-spacing in project reports dates back to the time when they were usually produced with a typewriter from a handwritten manuscript. The reasoning was based on two observations: Closely-spaced lines of monospace type are hard to follow because the characters line up directly above and below each other, making it hard to track from one line to the end of beginning of the next.5 Its much easier and clearer to write in corrections when theres plenty of room around the text. Now, while both of these are still true in general, even commodity printers allow us to use variable-width serif fonts, so theres no problem tracking lines. Similarly, computer-based document preparation negates the need for room for corrections in the nal version. It is still a good idea to (at least) double-space drafts of the document. Some institutions have abandoned this anachronistic requirement, but others, including DIT, have not. Usually, this is because people dont actually understand why the requirement was introduced to begin with and why it is no longer necessary. That is not to say that there is never justication for double-spacing. During the initial stages of publication, a document will be photocopied, marked up by editors and typographers, transcribed, etc. The publishers will usually require double-spacing [5, ch.2, p.886].
Aside: I believe that a project report should look like a well-designed book. This is at odds with the requirement for double-spacing, so I would concur with the recommendation of setting the linespacing to about 1.2 times its normal setting. This gives the impression of obeying the rules without completely destroying the appearance of the document. This is easy to do in some document preparation environments, but not in others, so your mileage may vary. [2]

Writing Style On the Passive Voice In times past, it was conventional for students to be told to write their project report in the third person with the passive voice. Rather than saying
5 In such documents, youd often nd yourself re-reading a line thinking it was the next line, and getting confused

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(rst person, active voice), I attempted to write the software in Java, this would instead be phrased as, An attempt was made to write the software in Java. More recently, attitudes to this element of style have become more relaxed. Writing in the third person leads to a somewhat stilted, formal style with which many students are uncomfortable. So, while writing in the third person is generally preferred, it should not be regarded as mandatory and use of the active voice should not be avoided where it is natural and clear to use it. That being said, a project report that reads I did. . . , then I did. . . , then I. . . should be avoided too try to reach a balance that avoids excessive formalism without turning your project report into something that reads like My News from Senior Infants. Try adopting the principle of using the passive third person where possible and the active rst person where necessary.
Aside: Personally, I have always found the bizarre grammatical contortions employed by some authors to avoid the personal pronoun quite irritating. Ive always preferred I believe that. . . or In my opinion. . . to It is the opinion of this author that. . . or similar constructions.

Spelling and Grammar It is utterly remarkable how many project reports are submitted every year with dreadful spelling and grammar. One would have thought that the availability of software spelling and grammar checkers would have led to an increase in the quality of these attributes of project report documents. Peculiarly, however, quite the opposite has been the case. It seems that as the tools become more powerful, so the authors become correspondingly more careless and lazy. There really is no substitute for getting another human being to read your work. Particularly irritating for the reader is word salad6 , where a sequence of words beginning with a capital letter and terminated by a full-stop resists having any semantic meaning extracted from it. The ingenuity required to construct something resembling a sentence, but having absolutely no intelligible content, is staggering but commonplace. That said, rules like never end a sentence with preposition are so contrary to common usage that they can be safely ignored almost entirely you are expected to write well, not become a grammarian.

Punctuation Modern writing style favours more open punctuation than the close punctuation of the past. Nowadays, the tendency is toward punctuation only where necessary to clarify potential ambiguity. Two things to watch out for, in particular, are very long sentences with no punctuation, and overuse of the exclamation mark. Very long sentences sometimes arise where a subordinate clause hasnt been delineated with a pair of commas this is easily xed.
6 A term used by the psychiatric profession to describe meaningless streams of unrelated words uttered by patients with damage to the speech-center in the brain.

CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT

37

The over-use of exclamation is more difcult, since it seems to be a more personal problem some people have an inordinate love of exclamation. If the exclamation character occurs more than once or twice in your entire project report, youre probably overusing it, and your writing will come across as excessively chirpy.

Chapter 6

The Perfect Project

Is well written Is well structured Is strongly referenced Evidences a design process applied to software development Evidences planning of the project as a whole Evidences critical thought

38

Bibliography
[1] Frederick P. Brooks Jr. The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering. Addison Wesley Longman, Reading, Massachussetts, 20th Anniversary edition, 1995.
A [2] Unknown Contributor. Double-spaced documents in LTEX. In Fairbairns [4]. Available from http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html? label=linespace.

[3] Unknown Contributor. URLs in BIBTEX bibliographies. In Fairbairns [4]. Available from http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label= citeURL. [4] Robin Fairbairns, editor. TEX Frequently Asked Questions. UK TEX User Group, May 2003. Version 3.6, Available from http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq. [5] John Grossman, editor. The Chicago Manual of Style. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637, Illinois, fourteenth edition, 1993. [6] International Standards Organisation. Excerpts from International Standard ISO 6902, Information and documentation Bibliographic references Part 2: Electronic documents or parts thereof. Available from http://www. nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htm. [7] Oren Patashnik. BIBTEXing, Feb 1998. Part of the BIBTEX documentation.

39

Index
Academic rigour, 13 Acrobat Distiller, 32 Acrobat Reader, 17, 32 Adobe, 32 Aladdin Ghostscript, 32 Base 14 fonts, 32 bibliography, 8 citation, 8 critical thought, 12 reference, 8 secondary source, 11 source, 8 StarOfce Impress, 17 Sun Microsystems, 31 table of references, 8 UML, 28

VB programming language, 13 deliverables, 15 DocBook, 32 Dublin Institute of Technology, ii, Dublin word salad, 36 Institute of Technology6, Dublin XML, 28 Institute of Technology35 ERD, 28 HTML, 28 inadequate referencing, 7 Java programming language, 13, 27, 28, 31, 36 label, 8 mainmatter, 33 Microsoft PowerPoint, 17 Microsoft Word, 32 organised thought, 13 Perl programming language, 27 plagiarism, 6, 8 POD, 27 PostScript, 32 project execution, 20 ps2pdf, 32 40