from Rami Bahsoon reply-to r.bahsoon@cs.bham.ac.uk to msc cs , msc csec , msc ise , msc iss cc teaching-staff@cs.bham.ac.uk, research-staff@cs.bham.ac.uk, Julie Heathcote date Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 5:33 PM subject [MSc Projects 2009]: Inspection and Preparations mailed-by gmail.com Dear MSc Student (CS, CSEC, ISE, and ISS) A. Project Inspections Schedule: ----------------------------------------------- This is a reminder that your project inspection will commence by next week. The schedule is available here: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rzb/MSciprojects.htm B. Objectives and Preparations: ---------------------------------------------- One member of staff (who is not your supervisor) will meet with you to discuss the progress you have made with your project, trying to ensure that your interpretation of the topic is reasonable and that you are making adequate progress. In other words, the project inspection is not formally assessed, but if there is cause for concern about your project, this is brought to your attention. Your chat with the inspector is an informal feedback activity. The inspector's feedback will provide you with a better understanding of your plan and whether the work is sensible and likely to result in a dissertation. If you have doubts or concerns about any aspect of your project(and supervisor), please be free to share your doubts with your inspector. The inspector will give you an informed opinion. At this stage, you might be wondering: what should I prepare for my 20-minutes meeting? - You do not need to prepare a PowerPoint presentation, unless your supervisor has explicitly asked you to do so. - Relax - it is just a friendly chat! You may need to give a brief summary of the objectives of your project, update on your progress - i.e. what you have achieved so far (this could be, for example, researching, eliciting requirements for your system, working on a small prototype/code to establish feasibility of a suggestion, understanding the problem domain, conducting a survey, and/or drafting a design etc.), and clear plan on how you intend to proceed with your project. [Note - different projects are approached from different angles - so don't panic if you don't have any implementation at this stage....] - My suggestion for preparation: read your proposal once, twice, and even trice. If you don't have one, produce a one-page summary stating the objectives and documenting the work plan. Make it available to your inspector three days before your meeting. When reading your proposal, be critical about every point - Ask yourself: what are the objectives? Why? How? Is it feasible (within the project period)? What are the expected results, the beneficiaries, users etc? You may even chat with a friend informing him/her about your project, your progress so far, plans, and doubts. This will mentally prepare you for the meeting. C. Location: ------------------ You are supposed to find your inspector at the specified time next to the "coffee-bar tables" on the lower ground floor and then take them to the desk/computer, where you intend to involve in a chat about your project and/or demonstrate any output you've reached. Please do not stay in a lab assuming that your inspectors will find you. Note that the inspectors may be a bit late, due to delays in previous inspections. The MSc inspection team wishes you the best of luck! Greetings, Rami -- --- Dr. Rami Bahsoon Lecturer in Software Engineering School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~rzb