6806 Organizational Details
The following is a summary of the organizational details for the course,
including a list of deliverables. In the past this course has been cited as
a cause of students missing class or otherwise neglecting their other
courses, so a number of steps have been implemented to try to prevent this,
and these are outlined below.
Laboratories
Three laboratory spaces will be used this term EN1038A, EN1038B and EN3076.
Each team will have assigned space in EN1038A or EN1038B and the rally course
will be set up in EN3076.
You will have after-hours access to these labs, but this is conditional
on you following all laboratory rules, which include:
- The labs are closed 0100 - 1200 (1:00 am - 12:00 noon)
Monday - Friday. This is partially motivated by the observation that
equipment 'failures' tend to be much more frequent when the people using
the equipment have not slept properly.
- Don't abuse the equipment.
- Don't remove any equipment from the lab.
- Remember that that the lab is a workplace, not a gym,
cafeteria or bar. You are expected to behave in a professional manner in
the lab (and, of course, most activities that are normally done in gyms,
cafeteria and bars are not permitted in the lab).
- Be respectful of other's right to use the lab.
Deliverables
The following are to be submitted by each team:
- Weekly timesheets: In most engineering projects the most
significant cost is salaries, which usually directly relates to time billed
to the project by the engineers involved. Since one of the goals of this
course is that you practice managing your team resources (you
already have lots of experience in managing your individual resources), we
want you to track and report the hours worked on the project.
A team timesheet spreadsheet will be provided for each team in the team
repository. This is to be updated by 5pm on each Monday to include, for
each member of the team, the hours worked in the previous week (Monday
00:00:00 - Sunday 23:59:59). You should be aware that the nominal budget
for the whole term is
650 hours for five person teams and 780 hours for 6 person teams (130 hours
per team member). Teams exceeding these numbers may be asked to explain
their inefficiencies.
- Demos: These are described in detail on another page: Demo 1 and Demo 2. The goal of these is to get you on
track with an incremental process, and that you
demonstrate progress in your increments towards the final goal.
- Documentation: In keeping with the incremental process, you are
expected to maintain live documents of your design. You will
submit current versions for evaluation a week before each of the
demonstrations (Oct. 1 and Oct. 22), and then the final form at the end
of the term (Nov. 30). We will provide a document template on which to base
your documents.
Note that the documents are intended to be design
documents, not "project reports". The primary focus of the document should
be to present the current design of your solution, rather than to describe the
project or your progress. The document should be in present tense,
simply stating the facts, rather than narrative style. It is appropriate to include some
discussion of how and why your design has been changed as the project has
progressed, or how it is expected to, or should (i.e., if you had time) be
changed, but this should be a smaller portion of the document. Appropriate use
of figures (e.g., block diagrams, circuit diagrams and UML diagrams) is
essential to good technical communication.
- Final Competition As described in the project
description the final trial will be in the form of a competition
between teams.
- Logbook Each team member is required to keep a logbook, which is to be
kept current during the semester and to be submitted at the end of the
term. Note that you should not be transcribing or writing up your
logbook, but rather should use it as a place to keep notes as you make
them (i.e., don't write things on other paper then copy them into
the logbook). It is appropriate to write a few notes summarizing
your activities as they progress or at the end of a brief time working
on the project. Logbooks are not expected to be neat. In addition to
being submitted at the end of the term, we will be doing spot-checks of
your logbooks -- we may ask to see your logbook at any time that we find
you working on the project and will take note if it is out of date.
- Peer evaluation As outlined in the evaluation, each student will
be asked for their assessment of how much was contributed by each member of
the team. This will be used in adjusting team member's individual
marks.
Meetings
We will hold review meetings with each team on Oct. 4 and Oct. 25. The
purpose of these meetings is to discuss your design and progress so far,
and for you to seek advice or air any issues that you have encountered.
You should come to these meetings prepared to give an overview of your
design and progress and any obstacles that you see. Of
course, you do not have to wait for these meetings to seek out any of the
instructors -- if you encounter any problems, or want to ask any
questions, you should contact one or both of us by the usual means
(i.e., office, e-mail, phone).
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Last modified $Date: 2007-08-17 10:29:09 -0230 (Fri, 17 Aug 2007) $ ($Revision: 68 $)
by $Author: dpeters $.