Managing Your Software Project: A Student’s Guide

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.