Individual Project Proposal: 10% Deadline: End of Learning Week 4
Initial work-in-progress report to confirm a project's aims and proposed solution and to identify potential deliverables, typically few sides of A4 (around 1000 words) + GANNT chart; clarity of requirements / initial specification / intended context of application of the project output.
For project proposal, you are supposed to work on following project planning tasks:
(i) Topic identification. You need to decide what kind of area you would like to do your work in. This will also allow the coordinator to find a staff member suitable for supervising you.
(ii) Preparation for supervision. You must arrange and attend an initial meeting with your supervisor. He or she will want to know your draft project title and see a brief written description of what work you have in mind.
(iii) Subject area study. Once you have settled your topic area you need to begin researching in more depth. Find books in the library and other sources on the Internet. Keep a note of the references. Write up a description giving your views of the area and, where you can, outline what problem that you are planning to solve or which issues that you are planning to investigate.
(iv) Methodological considerations. Next you should consider how you will tackle you project work. What are its aims and objectives? If you are gathering information, what methods will you use to collect
it? What methods will you use to analyse it? Answering these questions will lead to your research design. If you are developing software, what development methodology will you use? What tools do you need? Answering these questions will break your project down into its constituent tasks. You may need to take into 14consideration the ethical requirements of the School Research Committee and the professional requirements of the British Computer Society to ensure that your project is in compliance.
(v) Planning. Once you know what you want to do and how you plan to do it, the next step is to calculate how you can manage to do it in the time available to you. This can be done by making a timeline showing all the necessary tasks and estimating how long each one will take. In that way it will be possible to predict when certain
deliverables will be created. The most important one will be your project report which has to be completed by the 24 week deadline. However, your supervisor will also need to receive an Intermediate
Deliverable after 12 weeks and you need define what that deliverable will be. Finally you will have to think about any specialresources you might need for your project. This can include access to hardware or software or even to particular people - for example, the directors or managers of a network system.
(vi) Writing the Proposal. The final task of the Planning stage consists of putting together all the components you have prepared in the early tasks to form your Project Proposal. Guidelines for the Project proposal .The following headings cover the information that should be provided in the
proposal:
Title: A good title suggestive of the nature and scope of the project Rationale: The background to the project, giving an account of the topic area and where appropriate a statement of the problem or the primary hypothesis. (1-2 pages)
Description: A brief description of the project aims and objectives, the research or development methodology and any ethical or professional
issues. (1 page)
Deliverables: The expected outputs of your project including products, results, guidelines and report chapters.
Schedule: The planned timeline of the work showing identified tasks, milestones and deliverables.
Resources required: Any special hardware, software or other resources that you anticipate. The nature and number of any human subjects from whom you intend to gather data.
References: References supporting your statements in the Rationale and
Description sections.
Submission
The precise format and method of submission should be decided in discussion with your supervisor.