5th Week Exams + my FYP Proposal notes

Here are the 5th Week Exams: v1 and v2.

Below are notes I wrote wrt Final Year Project.




Elements of a Final-Year Project Proposal

1. Reason for Existence

The 'Why' question is very important.  You need to be able to summarise quickly what problem your project will solve.

This is the number one question that any marker/examiner will ask.  "Why did you do this?"  If your answer is weak to begin with, you will have built on weak foundations.

Categories of answers to this question include:

A- Because this is absolutely original and we can publish a paper.
B- Because there is a need for it in the market.
C- Because it's cool and we want to use it ourselves; or, because I want to learn how to do this, to get a job later.
D- Because we know how to do this already.

2. Specificity

The proposal must be specific in its outline, making it very clear what the minimum deliverables are at the end.  These will be used to measure the students' degree of achievement.

If you provide generalities, you are not being specific.

If you under-promise, you may not pass the 'substance' test below.

If you over-promise, you will be measured harshly at the end.

It is very important that you imagine very well what you will deliver, and consider all aspects of it.

3. Technically

The project must be a substantial technical work that reflects the  knowledge and skills appropriate for an MIU CS graduate.

Substantial means:
-  reflecting knowledge acquired throughout your degree
- involving a large number of hours in its development - e.g., at least 60 hours of work on implementation and development, for all students involved.  If you imagine that the project is 20 weeks long, this averages to three hours of work a week between all members, on the technical side, not including other aspects of the project such as presentation-preparing, document-writing, research, etc.

4. Novelty

The project should be different and not another copy of other people's past projects.

5. Research

You cannot do any of the above well, unless you have done some preliminary research to find out what other people have done and where your proposed system lies.  Research allows you to forecast - as much as you can - the technical substance of the project, how novel it is, and help you in formulating the specifics of your deliverables.

6. Skills Gap

It is always important to think about where you are and how much skills you must acquire in order to deliver your project.

7.  The Plan

You will very likely be wrong about the plan, we all mis-plan.  But that does not mean that a plan is not important.