Documentation Descriptions and  Guidelines

Project Proposal

Each project team must submit one project proposal to the CA400 coordinator Dr. Geoff Hamilton. A project proposal consists of 2 documents: a completed and a signed project proposal form and a project proposal description:

• Project proposal form may be downloaded here (PDF format only)
• Project proposal description - This is a complete description of the proposed project, which will be agreed with your supervisor. All proposal description must have the following 6 headings:
  1. Description - Minimum  250 word description of the proposed project.
  2. Programming language(s) - List the proposed language(s) to be used
  3. Programming tool(s) - List tools (compiler, database, web server, etc.) to be used
  4. Learning Challenges - List the main new things (technologies, languages, tools, etc) that you will have to learn
  5. Hardware / software platform - State the hardware and software platform for development, eg. PC, Linux, etc.
  6. Special hardware / software requirements - Describe any special requirements.
     • Note 1 - In general the School of Computing is not in a position to supply and support special hardware / software for 3rd years projects. Accordingly, any special needs should be provided by the students and discussed with your supervisor.
     • Note 2 - It is assumed that all projects will be developed / demonstrated using standard lab machines. Students may use their own hardware, but all project must be demonstrated in a School of Computing lab, either on a lab machine or the students own machine.

Functional Specification

A Functional Specification is a detailed technical description of the system to be developed. It includes a description of the problem to be addressed, a description of the proposed solution, a high-level description of system design (or potential design), an example operational scenario(s), and a preliminary schedule.

The process for creating and submitting the Functional Specification document is as follows: 

• Each student must submit one Functional Specification document no later than 9am Friday 30/11/07.
• If you do not submit a functional specification by the deadline you will automatically receive a mark of 0 out of 10. There will be no exceptions to this.10% of the overall mark is allocated for this deliverable.
• All specification documents must be submitted via the project box in L114
  • A box is marked "CA400 Functional Specification"
  • You must complete the submission form with your Functional Specification

Contents of Functional Specification

The contents of each Functional Specification document will vary depending on the nature of the project. However, all project functional specifications must contain the following information as a minimum. The specific format, layout and contents of each document is at the discretion of its authors.

Project Blog

This is an on-line project diary. You should add at least one entry into your blog each week of the project. Examples of the kinds of entries which should be entered into the blog are as follows:

• Meetings with supervisers.
• Major design decisions taken.
• Problems encountered, and how they have been overcome.
• Milestones achieved according to the original project plan. If milestones have not been achieved, then contingency plans to get the project back on track should be included.
• Details of how your system is validated/evaluated (for software engineering projects, this will normally require the use of an appropriate testing strategy, and for information systems projects, this will normally require the use of an appropriate user evaluation strategy).
• In the cases where help is obtained, the nature of this help and from whom it was obtained should be included.
• Link to the original functional specification
• Links to system mock-ups/prototypes/screen shots/etc.

User Manual

This is a 5 to 10 page user instruction guide on how to use the software system. It should include a step by step guide on how to use the product major components and should be written for a user and not technical audience (unless the system / product is intended for use by technical persons). You may consider including screen shots.

Technical Specification

This is an 8 to 12 page detailed design document, which reflects both the initial design and the current design, incorporating any major changes made after initial systems design. The contents of each Technical Specification document will vary depending on the nature of the project. However, all projects Technical Specification's must contain the following information as a minimum. The specific format, layout and contents of each document is at the discretion of its authors.