CSE 145 - Tasks: Project Specification

The first stage of the quarter is to specify your project, define a schedule and a set of milestones, and assign members to the various components of your project. Like everything else in this course, you want to do this job only once. Of course, everything you plan now will be changed as reality imposes itself, but the more seriously you take the planning now the more productive you'll be at getting it done. Do not think of this as just another course make-work assignment. This is something that you should feel is an integral part of building your system. It is your blueprint for a successful project for the quarter.

The write up should go on your project webpage. Send the instructors and TA an email when it is available.

Your specification should cover the following topics:

Project Charter

• The charter provides a ONE-PAGE high level description of your project
• Project Overview - Describe the project briefly in layman's terms (one that your grandmother could understand). This should not be more than a few sentences.
• Project Approach - Provide more technical detail (one that other students could understand). List the team members and their roles.
• Project Objectives, Milestones and Major Deliverables - List your objectives and milestones without getting too detailed (you will do that later). What are the specific goals of the project for this quarter? What are potential longer term goals? Deliverables should include a description, a date, and the persons who are responsible.
• Constraints, Risk and Feasibility - What are the potential stumbling blocks? What is realistically feasible here? The quarter goes by very quickly. The better approach is to over-deliver on what you promise, rather than under deliver on a set of unrealistic goals. Be sure to include risks - a list of things that could go wrong and how to avoid them.

Group Management

• What are the major roles in your group's management?
• How will decisions be made? By leader, consensus?
• How will you communicate? Email, meetings in the lab, discussion board?
• How will you know when you're off schedule, and how will you deal with schedule slips?
• Who is responsible for which deliverables and milestones?
• Who will produce the weekly group status reports?

Project Development

• What are the development roles and who will handle them?
• What hardware/software will you use? What do you have available? What do you need?
• If there is software/hardware that is needed, provide a justification for its cost.
• Where will you order it? When will it arrive?
• How will you do testing?
• How will you do documentation?

Project Schedule

Define a set of milestones with a specific definition of what each milestone is, what it means to complete each milestone, and when you expect to complete them. Define the milestones at two scales, a high level set of key milestones, and a low level set of weekly milestones. Also prioritize them. Some that are necessary, others that are useful, some are hopeful if time permits, etc. Gantt charts are often helpful to better visualize the milestones and understand their dependencies.