Programming Project:
Teams of Three People; no more, no less. In the event of a class with a number of students not divisible by 3, one or two groups of four will be permitted. Do not assume you can form a group of four if there is a number of students in the class not divisible by four! A group(s) of four will only be permitted after all groups of three have registered with the instructor. Single or two-person teams are not permitted under any circumstance. It is up to you to form your own team. It is STRONGLY encouraged that you form your team and start thinking about your project as soon as possible.
You will design a commercial software project using the software engineering skills you already have and those you will refine in this class. The use of C++ is highly encouraged and examples will be provided in C++, as will the study of objects and object-oriented programming be done in C++. If you must use another high-level language like Java in your project, the support for this language decision will be somewhat minimal. Visual Studio 2008 will be supported in the computer labs and will be available for home use for this course.
You are highly encouraged to seek out an industry partner - either an existing employer or someone who is willing to let you earn while you learn.
All Projects must receive prior approval. Your professor will not provide example projects, but will be happy to help you refine your own ideas.
You will submit a one-page project proposal on 03 February 2009. This proposal should include your group members, the name of your project, a rough idea of how you will solve it, and a rough idea of how you plan to implement this project. If you are familiar with the C335 project that we did, you can think of this as a similar, but much more in-depth endeavor.
On 12 February 2009, you will give an initial status report of your project’s progress. At this point in time, you should have a Gantt Chart that shows what your timelines are and what your milestones are.
You will give a PDR (Preliminary Design Review) of your Project to the class on 19 February 2009. A Power Point Presentation would be helpful. As a class, we will evaluate the complexity and feasibility of the proposed Project and make suggestions and offer positive constructive criticisms.
A CDR (Critical Design Review) will take place on 10 March 2009. At the CDR, you should show exactly how you plan to solve your project’s problems and should provide a flowchart and a division of labor plan. One person programming and one documenting is NOT ACCEPTABLE. All components of the project should be shared by all team members.
This project is due on 23 April 2009. There will be a campus-invited EXPO (exposition), as well as invited representatives from industry. Grading will be done both by the class and by the instructor. Your group will also give a presentation and demonstration of your Project at this time. Professional attire is requested. You are expected to BOTH copiously comment and document your program. The part of your project that is turned in should be a written report that includes an introduction, some background, your code and documentation, problems you encountered and your solutions, future work, and your conclusions. We will add other aspects to the report such as maintenance requirements as the semester progresses. You should also include a user manual with your project. A draft of the written portion of your project is also due 14 April 2009.
You are encouraged to participate in the Undergraduate Student Research Conference. Teams that participate in this conference may replace one exam grade with the "grade" earned at this conference (I tend to be very generous when grading this conference work...). Should you choose to participate in this conference, an abstract must be submitted to me by 12 Mar 2009 and is due at Academic Affairs on 15 Mar 2009.
The written portion of your project will be evaluated by your professor and returned to you with comments. A final submission of your report is due on 21 April 2009.
The written portion of your project will be graded using these guidelines:
Your instructor is fluent in C/C++, Assembly, Pascal, Fortran, and Basic. Your instructor is familiar with DOS, Windows, and UNIX operating systems/environments.
Please contact your instructor if you have any questions!
This project is worth 30% of the final grade. Of the 30%, 2% is the proposal, 3% is the status report 3% is the PDR, 4% is the CDR, 10% is the Final Presentation, 3% is the first report submission and 5% is the last report submission.