standards

Senior Project/Master's Thesis Guidelines
Clark Savage Turner

These guidelines are a supplement to University requirements for senior projects and master's theses.. My guidelines are adapted from similar guidelines written by Professors Oliver and Buckalew and Stearns.

Computer Science Department Guidelines for Senior Project

Available outside the CSC office 14-254

Guidelines for Completing Graduate Theses and Reports

Available in the Graduate Office 38-154

My slides that explain some of my views on master's theses provide additional thoughts on all of this.

Choosing a Topic

The most important consideration is finding a topic that interests both of us. I will be happy to consider many topics, the most interesting to me include the following:

Requirements and problem definition in the engineering of software
Legal constraints on the software development process
Software safety analysis, especially at the requirements level
Ethics in the process of software development

How Long?

Plan on spending an entire academic year on your project. Few people complete their work in two quarters. You can earn credit for the additional quarter by taking CSC400/500. In any case, you must always be enrolled in some course if you are working on your project with me as your advisor.

Scheduled Meetings

We will schedule a meeting once per week to discuss your project. It may be short, but it should be regular meeting time. Think of this meeting as a class time.

Your Development Process - if this is a project

It is entirely YOUR responsibility to make sure your project gets done. I will not push you to progress or finish; this is a deliberate attitude and doesn't indicate a lack of caring on my part. I feel it is important for you to succeed on your own without prodding from me. You will find the weekly meetings useful to keep you on track.

I do require you to use a formal development process for your work, even if it does not involve development of some software artifact. I suggest strongly that you read:

Humphrey, Watts. A Discipline for Software Engineering . Addison- Wesley, 1995

if you need guidance in creating your development process. If you are doing a more analytical project, I insist that you read

Shaw, Mary, Designing Good Research Projects in Software Engineering ... and getting results accepted for publication

it can be found here. We will negoitiate your particular process during the first quarter of work. Usually, I do insist that you include the following:

Submit a proposal for your project, including a schedule, abstract, planned methodology, initial bibliography
Deliverable description with enough detail to know when you've done "enough"
Basic QA activities

Deliverables, Due Dates and Grades

At the beginning of each quarter, I expect you to turn in a project plan outlining your deliverables for that quarter and the date each will be completed. These dates are up to you; my only proviso is:

The first draft of your final writeup must be turned in by the end of the 8th week if you want a grade for that quarter.

As for grades, I use the following scale:

All deliverables are complete and satisfactory.

All major deliverables have been turned in and need some revision work or the project write-up was turned in after the 8th week.

One or more major deliverable has not been turned in.

Documentation Requirements

Many students get to the writeup phase of their project and have a difficult time getting started. I know many students who have finished all their technical work but have yet to start their writeup. To help prevent this problem, I ask you to turn in part of the writeup at various times during the project. You can include these submissions as part of your deliverable plan discussed above.

These submissions must include, at a minimum, the following:

Journal

Buy a hardbound journal and use it to document your ideas, project work and hours on a regular basis. All entries must be made in ink and never tear a page from your journal. Bring your journal to each weekly meeting.

Project proposal

Use the proposal to persuade me that you have a worthy topic. Senior project proposals must be in the format described in the CSC Department Guidelines.

Abstract

State what you are doing in one page. Include the ACM classifiation system descriptors at the bottom of your abstract. You can find the classification system in the Computing Reviews journal in the reference room of the library.

Annotated bibliography

Do the research work early and write a paragraph describing what you learned in each source.

Outline

An outline of your final writeup. The earlier you do it, the easier the writeup will be.

Problem description and discussion of previous work

Describe the problem in great detail; make it clear to the reader what you're trying to solve. You must also give the sense that the problem is worth solving.
What other solutions have been proposed or implemented for this problem? Why are they not good enough? You must preparte the reader to belive that your solution (which the reader knows nothing about) is better than these other attempts. This is also the section where you describe any work your solution is built on.

Requirements documentation

To be delivered as appropriate to your development process. If an end-user is involved (it might be your advisor), the requirements document must be approved.

Design documentation

To be delivered as appropriate to your development process.

If you are not doing a design project, the equivalent analytical work must be done, what is the nature of your solution or your argument about it? (I suggest you read some other theses and senior projects of this type where I have been the advisor so you can see how this might play out.)

Adherence to the standard college research paper style guide

Slade, Campbell, Ballou. Form and Style. Houghton Mufflin, 1994

A Final Word

It is a bad idea to leave Cal Poly with your project unfinished. Almost everyone who does never finishes; everyone who does wishes they had stayed and completed their work. It is quite difficult to work full-time and expect to have some time and motivation left over to finish your project. I won't include here the tragic stories of what happens to many students who leave with their degree unfinished. I probably will give you the oral version during one of our meetings. In any case, if you leave there is a high probability that you will never get your degree.

Last updated October 2002

Senior Project/Master's Thesis Guidelines Clark Savage Turner