The goal of this aspect of the class is to document your work in a way that is suitable for publication. The proposal, reviews, and reports should build upon each other incrementally until the final report is done. This reporting is not a substitute for a good lab notebook!

The reports will consist of two sections:

1. A technical paper that you could publish in a workshop that is missing the technical body of the paper.
2. Proposal design and implementation details. If this is carried out as described it will result in the technical body of the paper next semester.

Presentations and written documents will be graded as follows:

Refer to the proposal anatomy and proposal writing presentations for more details on what is expected in each section of the report and presentation.

Project Proposal and Presentation - 15 points

The proposal should be no more than one page and the presentation should be approximately ten minutes.

The following will be part of your technical paper that is prepared by the end of the semester:
• Title Page (title of project, group members, project web page)
• Abstract (brief summary of project and deliverables your mother could understand)
• First half of the Introduction. Include the motivation but not any related background work up to this point.
Also include:
• Scope of the project, design approach, and estimate of design size
• Estimate of the tasks and milestones mapped to team members with target completion dates

Intermediate Proposal and Presentation - 25 points

The proposal should be approximately 5 to 10 pages and the presentation fifteen minutes.

At this stage you should have studied and refined your project to the point where you have a better background, understanding of the tasks and scope, well defined interfaces, delivery dates, and risks. This report will add to the previous report and focus on risks, interfaces, and roles of the team members.

You will continue to complete your technical paper by adding:
• Complete introduction
  • Background (related work and references)
  • Proposed work
    Include a very clear description of your baseline deliverables and stretch goals. This will define how you will be graded next semester!
  • Project Demonstration
• Initial bibliography
You will also add details to the original proposal showing that you understand the problem and have a maturing plan for completion by including:
• Project Tasks
• What components will be purchased and those to be built
• Required Resources
• Task Interfaces
• Testing and integration strategy
• Schedule and Milestones
• Preliminary risk assessment (mainly note issues you feel have yellow or red risk levels and mitigation plan)
• Preliminary parts list, both software and hardware (no vendor information required at this point)

Final Proposal and Presentation - 40 points

This should be a mature proposal that you should be able to take to a boss at work, funding agency, etc. for funding. Your proposal will define the contract for your grade next semester.

The final proposal will contain approximately 20 pages and the final presentation will be approximately 15 minutes.

The technical paper will be improved by adding:
• The summary of what you expect to show
The technical proposal aspect will be improved:
• Complete parts list with vendor name and information
• List of mentors and other resources
• Full risk assessment and mitigation plan
• Final milestones assigned to team members
• Current status of the project - any engineering deliverables so far
• Proposal summary including any lessons learned up to this point - either management, team, or engineering.