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Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT)

Dept. of Computer Science (DCS)

Some general notes regarding project courses

Other courses offered that will be a good complement (or a Co/Prerequisite)

• COMP6311/COMP3110 Software Analysis and Design (Semester 1, part of gradDip offered courses)

• Starting S2 2005 (meaning : you have to think about it for your choice of course in S1 2005)
  COMP6704 will be a (Co-)Prerequisite course for COMP6703.
  COMP6720 will be a Prerequisite course for COMP6702

Start your project as early as possible (even one semester before)

You are authorised to do so. What you are not authorised is to finish late.

Produce some javadocs or similar of the work

Document your code.

Timetable management

The timetable is a tool to help you to manage ... your time !
Use it, don't just look at it at the beginning and the end of your project. Look at it every week and adapt it to your progress. Start as fast as possible : the beginning of the semester is when you are free from other assignment so produce as much work as possible around your project during that time.

High Level Scope is a different thing than the requirements

High level scope is roughly the direct translation of what your client is able to produce : a general idea of what he is expecting. Then you have to work with him to transform some general ideas into detailed requirements. There are different way to express the requirements. Think about General user requirements (High level scope), Context diagram of the system, requirement trace-ability Matrix, Use Cases, Scenarios ...

The report and the project : 3 different targets

The User/Client

What the client get (software, user documentation ...)

The Manager and the next developer

The tools for the management and continuation of the project (requirements, modeling, code documentation ...)

The Academics system

The evaluation of your own experience during the semester (where, when did you do well or bad, how did you manage your project and its difficulties)

Usability testing

Basic usability testing is compulsory (put anybody that don't know your project in front of it, allow yourself a 5 min introduction to the purpose of the tool, and then stop talking and observe the user while taking notes)

a more advanced usability testing is even better but that will depend on the type of project.