Example Structure for the Project Report

Changes to the structure that you might consider include, different chapter titles, fewer chapters (merging short chapters), more chapters (splitting long chapters) and no appendices. Whether or not your structure is different to that given below, the comments given for each of the elements will still apply to your report. The suggested structure is as follows: Title/Cover Page The title page must give the title of the project, name of your group members, year and the name of your supervisor. See the attachment cover_page format. Abstract The abstract is a summary of the report in 100 to 200 words. It should summarize the topic area of the report, the main achievements, the results and the conclusions. Note, the focus of the abstract is the contents of the report and not the project. Acknowledgements Acknowledgements are an opportunity to give polite thanks for any help and encouragement that you have received in connection with your project. You may choose to mention supervisors, industrial persons, fellow students, friends, parents and possibly others. Table of contents This should list all the chapters, sections, and subsections of the report giving the page number on which each starts. Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter puts the work into context. Having read it, the reader should be left in no doubt as to:

the topic area to which the work applies why the work is being done what else has been done in the area and by whom how the author proposes to tackle the problem The project proposal is often expressed in terms of a main objective and possibly one or more additional objectives. It is useful to define "milestones" or "sub-goals" that mark the progress towards the objectives.

It is common to end this chapter with a brief overview of each of the subsequent chapters of the report. Chapter 2: Background and literature survey This chapter should give essential background information with references to published material in research papers, books, URLs, magazine articles and even newspapers. Expand on any references to other work that have been mentioned in Chapter 1. Refer to the notes on references (below) for the preferred way of referencing publications. The reader, stimulated by the presentation of ideas in this section, may be led to consult some or all of the referenced publications. This section will be useful for any student in a subsequent year who wishes to take the project further. Chapter 3: Design This chapter starts to describe the student's own work. It is where the main design aspects of the project are described. The style of presentation may reflect the life cycle of the project, for example commencing with the Requirements Analysis. The design should be clearly and precisely described with supporting diagrams. This may be supported by DFD's/Flowcharts/Use case diagrams etc to explain the flow of the information. The presentation should be at a fairly high level without excessive detail. This chapter is a suitable place to justify your choice of architecture, implementation technologies and APIs used. Chapter 4: Implementation The implementation details should be confined to the important, difficult or interesting aspects. Large chunks of code should be avoided, and diagrams and tables should be used to present details clearly. Chapter 5: Results Results that illustrate how the system designed by you works in practice, and how it is intended to be used, may be presented in this chapter. Screen shots may be useful to illustrate how the software interacts with the user. Chapter 6: Testing and Evaluation This chapter should give details of how the system designed and implemented by you was tested. The data and results obtained from this testing should be presented and consideration be given as to whether or not these results confirm that everything works correctly. The analysis of test results is very important and some assessment of their significance and quality must be given. Likely sources of error and inaccuracy should be mentioned. Use graphs, bar charts and histograms where appropriate, remembering to label all axes and give scales.

Chapter 7: Conclusions This can be a short chapter summarizing what you have achieved and what you have learned from the achievement. It is different from the abstract. The main results of your work should be highlighted with a critical appraisal of them indicating the extent to which the objectives outlined in Chapter 1 have been met. Recommendations for further activity are often included in this chapter. Any limitations of your project can be mentioned in the end. References There are a number of schemes for presenting references to the reader. The recommended method, used in IEEE journals, is to identify each reference with a number located at the appropriate point of the text in square brackets, e.g. [42]. The list of references included in your report must give all the relevant information to enable the reader to find it. For a book give:

Author(s) name(s) Title (chapter and page if relevant) Publisher's name Year of publication

For a paper give:

Author(s) name(s) Title Title of the journal Year of publication and volume number First and last pages

For a URL give:

Full URL Title of the page, create one if necessary Date referenced

Appendix A, B, C, etc. 1. These appendices can be very useful for giving detail that would otherwise disrupt the flow and readability of the report. They are given titles (e.g. "Appendix A: Example of the operation of the system") and bound in with the report. In general they are optional though, by convention, for a programming project, Appendix A often contains a nontrivial illustrative example of an input to the system and the corresponding output. For some projects, appendices may include tables of data like Data Dictionary, List of abbreviations, Figures, Tables.

Note : Program listings (apart from short code snippets) should not be submitted as part of the Final Report. Some important notes while preparing the project report The following suggested guidelines may be followed in preparing the Final Project Report : Good quality white executive bond paper A4 size should be used for typing and duplication. Care should be taken to avoid smudging while duplicating the copies. Page Specification : Left margin - 3.0 cms Right margin - 3.0 cms Top margin - 2.5 cms Bottom margin - 2.5 cms Page numbers - All text pages as well as Program source code listing should be numbered at the bottom center of the pages in numerals. Font Style - Times New Roman Font Size - Chapter heading 16 inch (BOLD) Section 14 inch (BOLD) Subsection 12 inch (BOLD) Text content 12 inch (normal)