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(RIPHAH FAISALABAD)
Software Project Guide
Created By,
Research and Development section,
Department of Computing and Software Engineering,
Riphah International University, Faisalabad
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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Table of contents:
Topics
Page no.
4. Eligibility Criteria
6. Project Supervisors
7. Project Proposal
8. FYP Presentation
9. Grading Policy
11
12
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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Whom to Contact?
This booklet provides comprehensive details to the students who are planning to take Software development projects
as their final projects. Therefore, such students are advised to go through it in complete.
If any of the quires are unsatisfied even after having read the information given in rest of the booklet then students
should contact to concerned supervisor.
At first it is important to understand what the software is? Software can be defined comprehensively as,
Computer Programs that, when executed provide desired function and performance, data structures that enable the
programs to adequately manipulate information and documents that describe the operation and use of programs.
Looking at the definition indicates clearly that developing software does not mean mere development of programs (or
code) rather it requires the related documents to be produced as well.
To develop software effectively requires following a process. Each stage of this process culminates in one or more
artifacts.
Examples of software projects are, software developed for face recognition, building a Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) System, Flight Simulation System, Point of Sale (PoS) System, a Web Portal, an Electronic Store
Front etc.de3
Software projects can be aimed at producing a desktop application, an embedded application (like to be used in
microwave oven) or some online application.
The University aims at producing such IT professionals who leave the impression of excellence in knowledge and
skills in their professional lives. Students are encouraged to come up with innovative and unexplored ideas while
addressing a problem.
After having completed the project students will be expected to have the following skills,
It will provide the students with an opportunity to implement the concepts they have learned throughout their
degree program so far.
Awareness of the latest technologies being used in the industry and more importantly the application of those
technologies.
Knowledge of all the formalities required to undertake a software project.
Enough confidence to take the challenges of their practical environment.
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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4. Eligibility Criteria
No student below 2.00 Effective CGPA will be allowed to take the project title.
MCS/MIT Students must have completed 30 credit hours to become eligible for taking the final project. So
dont enroll in course or drop your course if you have earned less than 30 credit hours.
BSCS/BSSE Students must have completed 90 credit hours to become eligible for taking the final project. So
dont enroll in course or drop your course if you earned less than 90 credit hours.
6. Project Supervisors
Each project group/individuals is assigned a project supervisor, who must be a permanent faculty member of Riphah
International University. The role of supervisor has been identified as below:
Technical guidance in the FYP.
Continuous Evaluation (sessional marking) and monitoring of students work on FYP
7. Project Proposal
Each project team must submit a Project Specification by specified time. The project proposal is a simple outline of the
project that student wish to undertake. The project proposal is not marked and does not contribute to the final mark
awarded for the project. However, student must not allow proceeding with a project if they do not produce an
acceptable project proposal. The deadline for submitting proposals should be given. Project proposals will be
reviewed by the project panel. For each proposal, there are two possible outcomes:
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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8. FYP Presentation
There shall be four project presentation one by the end of midterm exam of 7th semester called First Project
Presentation and other by end of final exam of 7th semester.
Then third project presentation will be held after midterm exam of 8th semester and last by the end of 8th
semester final exam called The Final Project Presentation.
From the start of 7th semester, students shall maintain a project file in which regular (weekly / fortnightly) visits to the
supervisor shall be recorded date-wise, along with details of tasks assigned, completed and remarks of the supervisor.
The project file has to be weekly signed by the supervisor.
At the time of Final Project Presentation, Head of the Department, in charge FYP, Supervisor and External Checker
must be present. On the day of Final Presentation, good refreshment must be officially provided to External Checker.
A Letter of Appreciation should be issued for External Checker, to be given to him/her on the day of presentation.
9. Grading Policy
The First project presentation will be of 20 marks with the following marks distribution.
Presentation : 10 Marks
Project File : 10 Marks
The Second project presentation will be of 20 marks with the following marks distribution.
Presentation : 10 Marks
Project File : 10 Marks
Realization : 10 Marks
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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The Third project presentation will be of 20 marks with the following marks distribution.
Presentation : 10 Marks
Project File : 10 Marks
The Forth project presentation will be of 140 marks with the following marks distribution.
Presentation : 30 Marks
Project File : 50 Marks
Realization : 60 Marks
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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Supervised
By
Project Supervisor Name
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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For example:
Internal Supervisor
External Supervisor
Supervisor AB
Supervisor XY
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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The title of your project should have been established when the project was agreed with your supervisor. Try to restrict
it to 6 or so words. There used to be a limit of 36 characters (the greatest number of letters that would fit down the
spine of the report along with your name and year) and that is still about right.
Avoid unnecessary words in your project title, make it concise. A title 'the specification, design, implementation and
testing of a Virtual CPU Simulation System' may be very precise but holds little more information than 'A Virtual CPU
Simulation'.
However it is most important that the title is accurate, there is little point in titling a report as 'A Virtual CPU Simulation'
when what you actually did was to establish a design for one. The title should then be 'A Design for a Virtual CPU
Simulation'.
11. 2 Abstract
After the title, the abstract is the next level of detail regarding your work. The scientific community relies on 'The
Abstract' as the main means of communicating research interests. There are many collections of abstracts published
from which interested parties can trace the original work. They form the first step in a researcher's quest for up to date
information regarding work being carried out worldwide.
The abstract is a one A4 page, 1.5 Line Spacing, retrospective account of the achievements, techniques and
conclusions of the thesis. On no account are you to exceed one page. Do not go into a great long explanation of
the general area, be very precise and stick to what you have achieved. Be sure to include as much relevant
information as possible on that page.
The abstract is not an introduction and should include an explanation of what was achieved in the project, not.
11.3 Acknowledgements
This is the page after the Abstract and is optional. It is usual to acknowledge those that have assisted you in your work
and will normally include your main project supervisor. The order of acknowledgments (most important first) and their
respective length indicates their relative importance to you.
11.4 Table of Contents
This page must show the start page of each section of the report and an example is given below
Note that Chapters must be numbered and sections within a chapter numbered using a decimal notation. The pages
of the report should be numbered from the beginning of chapter 1 and that the pages before chapter 1 numbered
using roman numerals
Abstract
Acknowledgements
ii
Contents
iii
vi
1 INTRODUCTION
2 LIMITATIONS
2.1
Size limitations
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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61
Bibliography
64
A Appendix A Title
B Appendix B Title
11. 5 References
The correct use of referencing is discussed below, but the list of references should appear in this section.
11.6 Bibliography
Many students cannot distinguish between Bibliography and References.
Bibliography is a list of published materials you have read or consulted for general information concerning the subject
of your Project but not made any direct reference to in your report. You could call this list 'background reading'.
11.7 Appendices
These should be used to hold bocks of information that were generated or used during your project but are so big that
if they put in the main body of the text would disrupt a person reading the text. The sort of thing that you may find is a
complete program listing written by the student, reference tables that were used by the student in some engineering
calculations or the details of the replies to a questionnaire.
It is sometimes difficult to decide whether to include information in an appendix or as a table in the main text. If it can
fit on one page I would always include this in the main text and sometimes I would include slightly larger tables if they
were really critical to the understanding of the issue being written about.
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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By tradition appendices are identified by letter rather than number and where information is put in an appendix it must
be referred to from the main text e.g.
A full list of the questionnaire responses is given in Appendix B
11.8 Size
One question that is frequently asked but is very hard to answer is How big should the report be.?. It is hard to
answer because project can vary so much. Where you are doing a very technical project that perhaps required you to
define complex algorithms and write sophisticated code, it may be that you do not have time to write very much in your
report.
On the other hand in a management project where much of the work is discussing a variety of alternative ideas, you
would be expected to spend a high proportion of your time writing and consequently produce a much larger report.
In the past report have ranged from as little as 20 pages to nearly 100 but for the first time we are now changing from
double to single spacing so I think this may reduce the project size by nearly .
The important thing to realize is that this is a 12 credit hour course and therefore represents around 550 hours over 90
weeks. I.e. you should expect to work full time, 6 hours per week on the project. You need to organize your time so
you can stop work on the technical aspects in time to write up what you have actually done. You then need to write
what you have done, avoid any unnecessary padding. That is then the correct length for your report.
12.2 Binding
Professional black buckram binding will have the title of the report, name of author (initials and surname) and year of
graduation in gold letters along the spine in the precise order Title, Name, Year. The lettering must be oriented such
that the lettering is upright when the text is lying on its back with the front cover uppermost, in other words the spine is
read from top to bottom. The front cover will carry the name of the University and then the same information as the
spine in the same order (Title, Name, and Year). Some binders include the name of the award on the cover (placed
between author's name and year), this is not required.
12.3 Writing Style
The most important thing about is report is that it is clear an easy to read. You need to avoid long sentences and
paragraphs and when you discover them think how they can be subdivided into something that is easier to read.
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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In general you should avoid long or obscure words but of course this does not include technical terms that have a
specific meaning in your area of study. It is important that in your report that you are able to demonstrate the correct
use of the relevant terminology.
Never include anything that sounds impressive but you are not quite sure what it means.
12.4 Citing References
It is impossible to do a final year project in isolation. Whatever project you choose, there will be work by other authors
in the past that have relevance to what you are doing. If, for example, your work involves building a web site, you
should build this to ensure accessibility to users with disabilities. To do this you should apply certain standards and,
unless this was the main focus of your project, it would be a waste of time to try to invent standards of your own. You
should find out what established standards exist and use them properly. In your report you should discuss this, but it
is important that you make it clear where you got the idea for these standards from. You do this by referencing.
The referencing serves 3 purposes.
Firstly, it adds authority to your work. If you just write that you have applied a certain standard to the design who
knows whether that was a good idea. Did you make it up on the basis of no experience at all, or was the person who
suggested it well known and authoritative. If you can reference the source of your information to a reliable source
then it is a strong argument that you are doing the correct thing.
Secondly it demonstrates that you are knowledgeable in the area you are discussing. Especially if you can include
references to a good number of sources in a specific area then you are presenting yourself as properly informed and
attracting more marks.
Finally there is the issue of plagiarism. It is very important that you do not attempt to represent other peoples work as
your own and correct referencing will protect you from an accusation of plagiarism.
There are actually 2 circumstances where you must reference source material.
Firstly you may want to use the exact words used by an author. In these circumstances you must put his or her words
in quotation marks and give a reference.
For example
If non-text content is a control or accepts user input, then it has a name that describes its purpose (W3C
2004)
W3C is the organization that published these exact words on its web site in 2004. You would then include a complete
reference to this web page in the reference section at the end of your report.
Similarly, you should give a clear reference to any diagram or table that you have copied from a source as part of its
title.
The other situation, is where you have not included the exact words of the original author, but you have still used his
or her idea. You must still give a reference to the original source.
e.g. you may write
If you use a picture as a button on a web page, you must add a name which describes what it is for. (W3C
2004)
This is saying what the quote above said in your own words, but you still have to explain where you got the idea from.
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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You should have established the aim of your project in the planning document that you created in the project proposal
and you should use the Introduction chapter to make it clear what you aim is and explain the main activities you
undertook during the project.
You should explain sufficient background to the project to make it clear why you think this is worth doing but you are
not expected to detailed subject review in this chapter.
You should also introduce the reader to the structure of the report and explain roughly what will be found in each
chapter.
13.2Literature Review
Every project needs to report on background reading. Often this is often reported in a single chapter which reviews
other work that is relevant to the project.
For example if the project is to create a program to render 3D digital objects for delivery over the Internet, it would be
important to report what existing programs and algorithms exist. It may also be sensible to review literature on the
software tools that can be used to build or test this program that you will write.
This is an important chapter and the reading must be properly referenced, but it is important that it focuses on the
issues relevant to the project and does not include generally interesting stuff that only has a tangential relevance to a
project. In the above example a review of the history of the Internet is interesting but not relevant. It could in theory be
a good idea to discuss the possible tools that could be used in the development, but if you have already made a
definite decision to use C++ with a specific development environment that is available at the university, then there is
little benefit of including a review of other software that you will definitely not use.
Sometimes there needs to be more than one background chapter. In a management project on the changing role of
the internet in customer relationship management, there may be separate chapters which deal with the issues of CRM
and e-commerce.
13.3 Client Information
For some projects, particularly where there is an external client involved, a significant part of the project is to find out
and analyze their requirements. If so this should be reported in its own chapter.
13.4 Design
Many projects involve students creating some sort of software or hardware. It is important that this is based on a good
design using proper design tools. This should be properly reported in a chapter of its own. This may include the
discussion of design tools although this may have already been done in the background research chapter
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad
RIUFSoftwareProjectGuide
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13.5 Implementation
Once a design is created the process of actually building the product rarely runs smoothly and the process should be
clearly explained, identifying what decisions had to be made during the process, what difficulties arose and how they
were dealt. It is a very good idea to keep a diary for the whole project, but it is especially useful here.
13.6 Evaluation
Evaluating what you have achieved is a vital part of the project. For some projects this can be fairly straightforward
and it is just a matter of testing whether the program that you have written runs correctly. For other projects this can
be much more open to discussion and perhaps involves a more formal evaluation of how effective your product is.
For some management projects the evaluation may be the main element of the whole project.
13.7 Conclusion and future work
Whereas the evaluation is often an attempt to establish the qualities of the software or hardware that you have
created, the final conclusion should look at the project as a whole and should analyze your performance. Did you
plan the project effectively? Were you prepared to deal with difficulties that arose? If you were to start again, who
would you behave differently? These kinds of questions needs to be assessed in your final chapter and this should
identify future work that could be carried out in the area in the future
ResearchandDevelopmentSection,DepartmentofComputingandSoftwareEngineering
RiphahInternationalUniversity,Faisalabad