project guide ec

8/6/2019 Project Guide EC

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Final Year Projects

Emmet Caulfield

May 23, 2003


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i

This document is Copyright (C) Emmet Caulfield 1998-2003. All rights reserved. Li-

cense is hereby granted for unlimited non-commercial distribution. Commercial repro-duction in any form is prohibited.


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Preface

This book is aimed at students preparing final-year project reports. The general

principles are applicable to theses at all levels. Some elements of this book are specificto the School of Computing at Dublin Institute of Technology.

I have written this for the benefit 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 Matters of Fact 1

1 Roles 2

1.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 The Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.3 The Supervisor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3.1 As a Consultant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3.2 As an Invigilator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.3.3 As the Marker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.4 The Second Reader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.5 The Project Coordinator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.6 The External Examiner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Academic Issues 6

2.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.2 Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2.2.1 Levels of Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2.2 Tolerance of Plagiarism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.3 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.3.1 Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3.2 Purpose of Citations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3.3 Meaning of Citations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.3.4 Academic Epistemology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3.5 Second-Hand References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112.3.6 Misconceptions Dismissed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.4 Expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.4.1 Critical Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.4.2 Organised Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.4.3 Academic Rigour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3 Deliverables 15

3.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2 Final Project Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

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CONTENTS iv

3.2.1 Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2.2 Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163.3 Final Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.3.1 Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.3.2 Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.4 Interim Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.5 Interim Presentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

II Recommendations 19

4 Project Execution 20

4.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.2 General Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204.2.1 Aim High . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

4.2.2 Get to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.2.3 Write Up Early . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.2.4 Get a Notebook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4.2.5 Use Your Supervisor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.3 Project Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

4.3.1 Be Realistic About Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.3.2 Draft A Plan Early . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

4.3.3 Revise The Plan Regularly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

5 The Project Report 26

5.1 Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

5.1.1 What to Include . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265.1.2 What to Omit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

5.2 Handling References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.2.1 Presentation Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

5.2.2 Online Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

5.3 Document Preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.3.1 Choose Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.3.2 Producing PDFs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.3.3 Document Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5.3.4 Document Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

6 The Perfect Project 38


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Part I

Matters of Fact

1


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Chapter 1

Roles

1.1 Overview

In this chapter, the roles of the various parties that are involved, directly or indirectly,

in a final year project are enumerated and explained. The marking process is outlined

and explained with reference to these roles.

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.

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CHAPTER 1. R OLES 3

1.3 The Supervisor

The supervisor may be a permanent member of staff or an external supervisor. Her role

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 role is advisory. The supervisor is

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 difficult 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 field 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 pro-

duces a near-perfect project will, undoubtedly, have his project investigated thoroughly

for possible plagiarism.


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CHAPTER 1. R OLES 4

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 final mark to the second reader who will either

agree or disagree. If there is disagreement, the two will collaborate to reach a con-

sensus 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 deliv-

erables 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 final 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 hasreceived 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 role.


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CHAPTER 1. R OLES 5

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 qualification 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 final.1

1.7 Summary

In this chapter, the roles of the people who are involved in a project were explained in

some detail. The process of grading a project was explained with reference to these

roles.

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.

1Personally, I have had external examiners overrule a project mark that they thought to be overly gener-

ous.


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Chapter 2

Academic Issues

2.1 Overview

A project report, thesis or manual1 is an academic document. There are require-

ments 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 researchcommunity, it is not uncommon to hear researchers joke that they would rather be

hanged for axemurdering their granny than be even accusedof 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 some-

thing really great in it, and proceed to incorporateyouroriginal idea into his assignment

without your permission and without giving you the credit that you deserve?

1the traditional term in DIT

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CHAPTER 2. ACADEMIC ISSUES 7

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 forgetful-

ness, 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 lec-

turer, and from project to project. For example, most lecturers tacitly tolerate some

level of plagiarism in minor assignments although it may be an individual assign-ment 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 final-year project level, ifI 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 flag potentially copied

assignments, examined the flagged 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!

2Personally, I would penalise inadequate referencing very severely.


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2.3.1 Terminology

A source is a single article, academic paper, a book, or other document fromwhich information has been obtained.

A reference is a piece of information that allows a source to be unambiguouslyidentified 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 identifier (like Murphy88) that uniquely identi-fies the reference both in the bibliography and in citations.

A citation is the short tag that appears after a word, statement, or paragraphthat 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 identifier 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 notclaiming as original

to allow the reader to find 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 ofplagiarism (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 second-

reader are perfectly within their rights to quiz you on your citations.

3The strategy for handling online sources (see Section 5.2.2 on page 30) is a particular exception


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The positioning and detail given in a citation (review the definition of citation in sec-

tion 2.3.1 if necessary) are significant in terms of the range of applicability of thecitation 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 flow of thought. The best location is just before a mark of punc-

tuation. [5, p.644].

Although not a hard and fast rule, in general, citations are placed afterthe 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 Span of Applicability

In the middle of a sentence, after a

word or term delineated by a typo-

graphical convention or quotation-marks

The preceding word or term

At the end of a sentence before the

full-stop

The preceding sentence terminated

by the full-stop following the cita-

tion

In the middle of a sentence before

a comma

The part of the sentence before the

comma

At the end of a paragraph, after the

full-stop that ends the paragraph

The preceding paragraph

Table 2.1: Example Citation Positions

Citation Detail

The amount of detail that you provide in a citation is very significant. There are two

basic reasons for this.

4A citation may apply to anything from a single word to an entire paragraph. The term span of text is

introduced to cover these possibilities.


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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 mustcontain 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 accord-

ing to the level of detail.

Example Citation Implied claim of understanding

(Murphy98, p.53) or

[1,p.53]Page 53 of the source and enough of the surrounding

pages to understand the material on page 53 thor-

oughly.

[2] or(Jones99) The source of in its entirety

[1,pp.43-49] 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 readercould 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.

5Of course, there are contexts where it is appropriate to cite an entire book, but relevant page numbers

should be included where possible


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The Work of Another

The concept of something being the work of another is equally easy to understand

if its not yourwork, then it mustbe 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 significantly, it is conventional to give her credit too by including hername 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 refer-

encing 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 thereference, 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


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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 findingan 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 actualfact, readers will think Wow, this is well referenced! and notTheres very little new

in this. You are not expected to do anything fundamentally original in your project

report it is a final 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 forfurther research.

2.4 Expectations

2.4.1 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 neces-

sary, experiments that you have conducted. If you expect to do well, you cannotmakearbitrary 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


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yourself and others. Your awareness of assumptions that you have made, the authorita-

tiveness of your references, and the nature of your conclusions are good indicators ofyour 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 ap-

proach 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 scientific 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 iden-

tify implicit assumptions and either eliminate them, by finding supporting evidence

(preferably), or make them explicitby 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 ve-

racity of a statement that you read on a bubblegum card.


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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, defined, and explained in terms of how they are evidenced in project de-

liverables.


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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, final 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 Final Project Report

3.2.1 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 beenawarded 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 justified

by your project report. We love to see people do well, and we hate being unable to

award a pass.

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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 final report electronically as a PDF document. How

you produce this document is completely at your discretion and it is yourresponsibility

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 traips-

ing 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 Final Presentation

3.3.1 Impact

The final presentation at the end of the year, usually around Easter, is more important

than you might think. It is the first time that your second-reader really gets an opportu-

nity to get a flavour 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 projectthat 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 petrified. 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 first impressions do last.

In short, it is very much in your interest to make sure that your presentation is as good


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as you can possibly make it.

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 coordina-

tor. 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 soft-

ware including Microsoft PowerPoint and Acrobat Reader will be made available. I

will personally make a PC with StarOffice Impress available given notice. During your

presentation, the lecturers may interrupt and request clarification on any point that theydo 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, youwont 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 final presentation. It allows your plans and work-to-date to be assessed

roughly.

1In 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.


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For many students, it is a baptism of fire 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 difficulty or may have got

off to a slow start, and to give the student some idea of what to expect in the final

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 final presentation about 30 minutes, around Easter

3. The interim presentation about 15 minutes, early December

4. The interim report free format, early December


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Part II

Recommendations

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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 com-

bined[1].

One interesting observation is that WMT students have, traditionally, wiped the floor

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 find out very

quickly and narrow the scope to something manageable by the time your interim pre-

sentation comes around.

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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 projectis 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 flavour 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 waffly 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 fire-

fighting 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 find 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 first 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


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Write down goals from week to week

Stuff random notes into

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 yourresponsibility to schedule project meetings with your supervisor at an agreed

time. Your supervisor may mandate a particular time, particularly if she is an externalsupervisor.

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.

Specifically, 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, sched-ule.

What you intend to do in the next week.

How your intentions for next week contribute to your overall goal or get youback 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.


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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 weekswhere 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 fit 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 final report, runs from mid-

November to mid-April, or 5 calendar months.

There are, on average, 4.35 weeks in a calendar month so you have a total of (round-

ing up) 22 weeks. You will not get much done over Christmas1, so you can immedi-

ately 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 Weeks Hours Working Days

Before Christmas 4 24 3

After Christmas 12 72 9

Total 16 96 12

Table 4.1: Project Timescale

As you can see from Table 4.1, you do nothave a lot of time. You must get the finger

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, get-

ting your project report proofread, incorporating changes, finding stray references, and

preparing for your final presentation.

1In 7 years of supervising projects, I have neverknown a student to get anything done over Christmas.


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Does that sound unreasonable? Remember, that it was assumed that youre only spend-

ing 6 hours per week on your project, so 3 weeks really means just a little more thantwo working days do you think that you can do everything in the preceding para-

graph 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 suffice. Your

project consists of 6 phases:

1. Preliminary Research

2. Software Specification

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 Weeks Hours Working Days

Research 3 18 2.25

Specification 1 6 0.75

Design 5 30 3.75

Coding 2 12 1.5

Test 2 12 1.5

Write-Up 3 18 2.25Total 16 96 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 workimmediately.


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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 direc-

tion 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.


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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 waffle 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 SubrahmanyanChandrasekhars Ph.D. thesis which, it is rumoured, was just 1 page long and con-

tained 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 insufficient 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 finding 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

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CHAPTER 5. THE PROJECT REPORT 27

you have a code-generation utility, such as yacc, that produces code from some kind

of input file (a grammar file in the case ofyacc), the manually-written input file, andnot prolific 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

fulfils 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 What to Omit

Padding

Dont pad your project report. There are many different types of padding:

Padding by general non-specific waffle there is no need to wax lyrical for 6


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pages on the reasons why you chose this project.

Padding by excruciatingly detailed explanation I typed this file by first hittingthe backslash (\) key, then the c, h, a, p, t, e and r keys inthat order, then I . . .

Padding by unecessary introductions to technologies there is no need for 30-page introductions to programming languages or technologies a 5-page ap-

pendix will usually do.

Padding by cut & paste there is no need for the BNF grammar for XML inevery 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 allof XML, HTML, ERDs, UML, and so ad infinitum 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 saymore 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 determi-

nations of an aspiring professional, not invective.

5.2 Handling References

5.2.1 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 mandatedfor

your final 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:


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The numbered style

The author date style

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 specific 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 Style Example

Single author Full author-date (Murphy, 1988, 209)

Short author-date (Mur88, 209)

Numbered [6, p.209]Two authors Full author-date (Smith and Jones, 1994, 100)

Short author-date (SJ94, 100)

Numbered [7, p.100]Many authors Full author-date (Beck et al., 1998, 50)

Short author-date (BBD+98, 50)

Numbered [8, p.209]

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

1Oren Patashnik is the author of the BIBTEX package that is used to handle referencing in LATEX.


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mandate different formats for the bibliography. The rules get very involved and de-

tailed, and there are standard abbreviations for oft-cited publications.

For a project report, while it is preferable that references adhere to one of the well-

known 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 maga-

zines, 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 unambigu-

ously.

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 identifies thatits 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 na-

ture 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 surround-

ing 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 difficult to narrowdown 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.


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Low Barrier to Entry

Traditionally, the difficulty 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 particularcaution 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 identified 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 identifies the whole and a

fragment identifier that identifies the specific part that you wish to cite. You could

then treat the whole as if it were a book, and the fragment identifier as if it were apage, 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

2Although Ive seen some dreadful books, full of rubbish!3If youre unclear about the distinction between sources, references, and citations, see section 2.3.1 on

page 8
http://java.sun.com/http://www.geocities.com/user?id=joeshmoehttp://www.geocities.com/user?id=joeshmoehttp://java.sun.com/


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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 thebibliography on page 39.

5.3 Document Preparation

5.3.1 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 document preparation system, such as LATEX.

A technical document standard, such as DocBook.

Aside: Personally, I use LATEX 2 for substantial documents. There are a number

of reasons for this choice including high-quality output, easy mathematical typeset-

ting, 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 final 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 usea system like LATEX 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 Ac-

robat 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 file was judicious and restrained in her choice of

fonts.

Adobes Acrobat Readerhas 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.


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If you use LATEX 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 sub-

stantial single-volume publication (based on [5, pp.34]):

1. Frontmatter

(a) Cover Page

(b) Abstract

(c) Acknowledgements(d) 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 first.

Quite simply, a well-thought out table of contents reduces the bulk of writing to a

matter oflon na bearna4, and eliminates a great deal of writing, rewriting, and moving

4Fill in the gaps


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content around.

In writing your project report, make sure to take into account the recommendations on

what to include and what notto 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 flowery 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 charac-ters on a full line.

Dont be mean with vertical whitespace.

Use numbered lists only for lists where order is semantically significant likethe steps in a recipe.

Use bulleted lists only for lists where order is not significant like a list ofingredients.

Dont shoe-horn information into tables inappropriately.


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There are exactly three dots in an ellipsis, . . . , no more, no less.

Set code in a monospace font (like Courier).

If you use a document preparation system like LATEX, 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 hand-

written manuscript. The reasoning was based on two observations:

Closely-spaced lines ofmonospace type are hard to follow because the charactersline 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 roomaround 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

final 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, includ-ing 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 justification for double-spacing. During the ini-

tial 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 recom-

mendation 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, butnot 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

5In such documents, youd often find yourself re-reading a line thinking it was the next line, and getting

confused


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(first 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 inJava

.

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

first person where necessary.

Aside: Personally, I have always found the bizarre grammatical contortions em-

ployed 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 sub-

mitted every year with dreadful spelling and grammar.

One would have thought that the availability of software spelling and grammar check-

ers 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 carelessand 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 be-

ginning 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 fixed.

6A 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.


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The over-use of exclamation is more difficult, since it seems to be a more personal

problem some people have an inordinate love of exclamation. If the exclamationcharacter occurs more than once or twice in your entire project report, youre probably

overusing it, and your writing will come across as excessively chirpy.


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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


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Bibliography

[1] Frederick P. Brooks Jr. The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering.

Addison Wesley Longman, Reading, Massachussetts, 20th Anniversary edition,1995.

[2] Unknown Contributor. Double-spaced documents in LATEX. 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]. Avail-

able 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
http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linespacehttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linespacehttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linespacehttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=citeURLhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=citeURLhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=citeURLhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/faqhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/faqhttp://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htmhttp://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htmhttp://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htmhttp://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htmhttp://www.nlc-bnc.ca/iso/tc46sc9/standard/690-2e.htmhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/faqhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=citeURLhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=citeURLhttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linespacehttp://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=linespace


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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

deliverables, 15

DocBook, 32

Dublin Institute of Technology, ii, Dublin

Institute of Technology6, Dublin

Institute of Technology35

ERD, 28

HTML, 28

inadequate referencing, 7

Java

programming language, 13, 27, 28,

31, 36

label, 8

mainmatter, 33

Microsoft PowerPoint, 17Microsoft Word, 32

organised thought, 13

Perl

programming language, 27

plagiarism, 6, 8

POD, 27

PostScript, 32

project execution, 20

ps2pdf, 32

reference, 8

secondary source, 11

source, 8

StarOffice Impress, 17

Sun Microsystems, 31

table of references, 8

UML, 28

VB

programming language, 13

word salad, 36

XML, 28

project guide ec

Documents