About this Book I wrote this book to help students who are about to start their first project. It provides guidance on how to organise your work so that you achieve your agreed objective. The advice is based on experience gained from supervising more than 50 successful student projects, in both engineering and computer science, during the last 10 years. Projects have varied in duration from 120 hour final year undergraduate projects, through 800 hour MSc projects and up to 5000 hour PhD student research projects. It is my experience that almost all students have the technical background, to a greater or lesser extent, to complete their assigned project but that a disappointingly large number lack the basic organisational framework. Once they are introduced to the rudiments of project management then they are better equipped to control their own progress. They can also concentrate their efforts more effectively on the technical challenges which they will inevitably meet. Of course you can improve your skills solely on the basis of personal experience but you are more likely to achieve your objectives, in a timely manner, with the help of an experienced guide. That is what I have tried to include within this book. It contains advice on how to solve some of the organisational challenges common to all projects so that you can successfully complete your project.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction.- A Profile of the Expected Reader.- A Profile of This Book’s Contents.- The Three Functions of Management.- 2. Creating a Plan.- Identifying the Activities in a Software Project.- Estimating the Development Effort Required for Each Phase.- An Alternative Division of Project Effort.- Translating the Effort into Production.- Identifying Deliverables and Milestones.- Reviewing Your Project Plan.- A Tool for Maintaining Your Project Plan.- 3. Gathering Your Project Skills.- Keeping a Hardback Notebook.- Communicating with Your Supervisor.- Publishing Your Project.- Making the Most of an Oral Examination.- Coping with StRESS.- 4. Collating Your Research Data Base.- Talking to Other Researchers.- Accessing Library Services.- Gathering Information Via Computer Networks.- 5. Selecting the Tools for Report Production.- Learn to Touch-Type.- Using a Word Processor to Write Your Report.- Producing Graphs and Charts.- Using a Drawing Package to Illustrate Your Report.- Including Equations in Your Report.- 6. Writing Your Report.- Creating a Structure for Your Report.- Strategies to Improve Your Writing.- 7. Developing the Software.- Creating the Statement of Requirements.- Example Statement of Requirements.- Analysing the Statement of Requirements and Writing the Requirements Specification.- Example Requirements Specification.- Rapid Prototype to Confirm the Requirements.- Alternative Approaches to Requirements Analysis.- Producing the Detailed Design.- Reviewing the Design.- Coding.- Verification & Validation.- Testing Individual Source Code Modules.- Testing Your Integrated System.- User Acceptance Testing.- References.- Appendices.- An Example Statement of Requirements.- Outline of a Project Plan.- Outline of a Project Report.- Gold Price Prediction System -Report Plan (version 1.0).- An Example Agenda for a Project Meeting.- An Example Report of a Project Meeting.- Outline of a Curriculum Vitae (CV).