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Team Report

You must submit a team report on the requirements specification and project plan in the first semester worth 15% of your total mark. The final year team project is a substantial part of your degree. It can have a major effect on the degree class you are awarded and even whether or not you pass the degree. The team report is to make sure you understand what your project requires you to do and how you are going to finish your component of the overall system developed by the team and how it all links.

The team report is marked by your supervisor and moderator independently. Before you submit the final version you should discuss the report with your supervisor to make sure both of you agree on what your project entails. The team presentation is also about the report and also a chance to get more feedback on your project.

The team report should be e-mailed directly to your supervisor and moderator, and you will get oral feedback during the presentation and further formal feedback via a written report returned to the group.

Finally, note that this is about the initial requirements, and you can, and most likely should, adjust these as you progress. Note, however, that with the report you are prescribing what you intend to deliver at the various stages.

Structure and Contents

Your team report should be at most 5,000 words per team member, excluding any figures and tales. It should contain the following information:

Project Title

The title of the team report document should be “Team Report” followed by the title of your project. List your team members as authors and also list your supervisor and moderator with their roles. Please also list the module number and module title you are taking and credits due for this module.

Project Description

The first section of the document should be a brief description of your project outlining the problem you are trying to solve, its context, and overall aims. You can adapt the proposal used to select your project, but should extend it according to your findings.

Contents

The report must address a full set of requirements with associated testable acceptance criteria, benefit and risk assessment with relevant quality factors, and a discussion of legal, social ethical and professional issues. It must further contain a description of the software development process the team wishes to adopt. In particular it should state clearly the deliverables each member of the team is working on.

There should be a list of more detailed aims and objectives for the project, in sufficient detail to show what each member will be working on and also how all the individual contributions will work together in the end. These are statements of what you set out to achieve with your project. Try to be as specific as possible at this stage, but avoid getting into too many details that may change later. It's only the main results and components of your project you should list.

Work Plan

The last section of the team report should consist of a time plan stating what each member is working on when. This should include clear milestones of what you expect to achieve by which date and also show how you intent to achieve these milestones and show the dependencies between the various tasks.

Make sure you clearly describe what you intend to include in the deliverables for each member. Link the deliverables to your time plan, such that you actually plan to deliver them when they are due.

Your time plan should further have at least two scheduled review meetings with your supervisor. You should typically see your supervisor once a week for a shorter time or once every two weeks for a longer time. The details of these arrangements are for you to agree with your supervisor. However, in your time plan you should mark out special meetings with your supervisor where you are reviewing your progress since the last such meeting (or from the beginning) and adjust your plan for the project based on the outcome of this meeting. These review meetings are mandatory and are considered as part of the mark of the reports (see marking criteria there).

You are free to choose the work plan format that you think is best suited for your project and working style. This may be a Gantt chart, but sometimes it may also be sufficient to simply list in sequence what you are working on with a time-scale and milestones/deliverables. Usually a weekly scale for the work plan is a good choice. Take note of the deadlines for the deliverables as listed in your PATS project description when you develop the work plan and also consider any other commitments and busy times such as the exam periods.

Marking Criteria

Your supervisor and moderator will mark your plan according to the following criteria:

  • Aims and objectives are clear, sufficiently detailed and provide a suitable challenge for each member of the team.
  • Systems requirements: Coherency and completeness of functional and non-functional systems requirements with clear justification/derivation. Identification of system scope and boundaries with clear declaration of any assumptions made.
  • Acceptance criteria: Testable acceptance criteria are associated with both the functional and non-functional requirements. Benefit and risk assessment and relevant quality factors.
  • Integration: the individual projects of each member of the team are aligned to integrate into a complete system.
  • Discussion of legal, social, ethical and professional issues.
  • Time plan is feasible, sufficiently specific to the project, and has a clear timeline and milestones; deliverables are suitable and clearly specified for each member of the team; approximate dates for at least two review meetings are given; the amount of work is suitable for the credits and level of the module.
  • The report is well written and clearly structured.

All criteria carry equal weight for the mark of the team report and will be evaluated on the fllowing indicative scale:

  • 70 - 100% - Excellent
  • 55 - 69% - Good
  • 40 - 54% - Satisfactory
  • 0 - 39% - Unsatisfactory
  • 0% indicates that the team has not adequately covered the topic or addressed the issue.

Supervisor and moderator will leave comments about your report explaining any concerns they may have and their expectations regarding the aims and objectives and deliverables. Make sure you consider these when executing the project.

team_report.1396522135.txt.gz · Last modified: 2014/04/03 11:48 by scmfcl