Final Progress Report

CSCE 487/489 Senior Design

Final Progress Report

Each team will submit a written report and give a presentation to demonstrate the final results of the work done on the project. The presentation should include a demonstration of the key functionalities of your project and should be organized so as to provide a good overview of the project objectives, design, implementation, testing, and risks or vulnerabilities. Indicate how well the objectives were achieved and how the project may be extended to improve or build on your work. Each team will have 20 minutes to present, therefore it is important to plan ahead and have a team rehearsal to make sure the presentation goes smoothly and adheres to the time limit.

The written report should be a comprehensive documentation of the project work. The general guidelines below essentially remain unchanged from previous reports. Keep in mind that the report should be self-contained and follow the best practices of technical writing. It should be well organized with descriptive section headers. It should be readable with text flowing smoothly between sentences and larger textual units. Use graphics, charts, and pictures effectively to improve presentation and readability. Supplement descriptive material with reflection and analysis, whenever appropriate.

Additionaly, each team member will submit a peer evaluation of every other team member and a self-evaluation, relating to the effective functioning of the team; use the provided evaluation form (doc, pdf).

Recall from the syllabus that the final progress report is worth 30% of your final grade, based on: 25% on the technical merit of the design; 25% on the quality and clarity of the report; 25% on the success of the demonstration; and 25% on the quality and clarity of the presentation (individual grades for presentation within a team may vary). Further, the self and peer evaluations are worth 10% of individual grades for the entire semeser.

Written Report Guidelines:

The report should contain:

[what] A description of the functionality that you have implemented and working; demonstrations of that functionality should be provided. A description of the functionality that you are currently working on and its status. A description of functionality that you have yet to implement, but plan to implement before the end of the semester.

[how] Provide a refined description of your development practices. Touch on how you are managing system configurations as you proceed through development, what release processes you have in place, and other process issues you have encountered and developed solutions for during the semester. Select one of the elements of functionality you have implemented and provide a more detailed description of how you developed that functionality. Describe successes and obstacles, and how you worked around them, in achieving that functionality.

[quality] As we enter the final portion of the semester your attention should be turning more towards evaluating the quality of your system and addressing inadequacies you find. Describe in some detail your testing and evaluation efforts. Illustrate on at least one component of your system how you have taken a systematic approach to assessing its quality. Provide the results of that assessment and explain why it is convincing evidence of correct operation.

[risk-analysis and mitigation] What risks were identified and mitigated; which vulnerabilities still remain. Explain what processes you put in place to detect problems quickly, worked around them, and provided redundancy across the team for loss of time by team members. Include examples of unanticipated situations that caused problems for your team and how you mitigated the impact of those issues. Is there a trouble-shooting chart for the users of your system?

[Conclusion] Include, for example, how well the project goals were achieved, what has been learned, and in which directions may the project be extended. You may also include a realistic cost analysis, if appropriate for your project.

The class web page under the heading, "On Technical Communication" has several links that may be helpful to you in writing the report.

Oral Report:

You must prepare a presentation for your project using PowerPoint. Presentations will be made in AvH 347, 7:30-9:30 a.m., on May 2. The six teams will present in the following order: Teams 4, 3, 5, 2, 1, and 6.

Submit your PowerPoint presentation, written report, and peer evaluations via the web handin (Teams 1 and 6 to cse489 handin and 2-5 to cse487 handin) by midnight May 2, 2011. Each team should submit only one copy of the PowerPoint presentation and the written report (pdf preferred).