Final Report Content Requirements

Template (1)

Final Report Content Requirements

Report Outline

Title Page

Acknowledgments (if any)

Table of Contents

List of Tables (if any)

List of Figures (if any)

Abstract & Keywords

1. Introduction
   • Problem Statement & Significance
   • Proposed Solution (System)
   • Project Domain & Limitations
   • Definitions of New Terms (optional)
2. Background Information & Related Work
   • Background Information
   • Related Work Survey
   • Proposed & Similar Systems Comparison
3. System Analysis
   • Requirements specification
   • Requirements Analysis
4. System Design
   • System Architecture
   • User Interface Design or frameworks/models or Component Design & prototype

5. Implementation
   • Implementation Requirements
   • Implementation details
   • I/O Screens

6. Testing
   • Test plan
   • Test cases
   • Test results

7. Conclusion:
   • Evaluation
   • Future work

8. References

Appendices

Detailed description of the proposal content:

Abstract:

It is a brief summary of approximately 50 words. It should describe briefly:

• the project purpose (importance, problem to be solved),
• the design methods,
• the main expected output (proposed system definition & name)

Keywords: (key terms describing your project)

1. Introduction

The main purpose of the introduction is to provide the necessary background or context for your project and its importance. It should consist of 4 subsections as follows:

1.1 Problem Statement & Significance

Outline the problem you are working on, why it is interesting and what the challenges are.

A good problem statement:

• States the specifics of the problem – who, what, when, and where.
• States the effect, but not the cause – what is wrong, not why it is wrong.
• Focuses on the gap between what is and what should be. The gap may be a change or deviation
• From a norm, standard, or reasonable expectation.
• Includes some measurements of the problem – how often, how much or When.
• Avoids broad categories like moral, productivity, communication and training since these tend to have different meanings for different people.
• Do not state problems as questions, since this implies that the answer to the questions is the solution to the problem.
• States why the problem is important.

(As printed in The Alcoa Eight Step Quality Improvement Process Copyright 1989, Aluminum Co. Of America, dated 5/89. )

1.2 Proposed Solution (System)

• State the suggested solution that your project will design to solve the problem (try to answer what you want to do in your project)
• List your aims & goals:
  • An aim is something you intend to achieve (e.g., learn a new programming language and apply it in solving the problem),
  • A goal is something specific you expect to deliver (e.g., a working application with a particular set of features).

1.3 Project Domain & Limitations: 

• State boundaries (limitations) of your proposed system in order to provide a clear focus (try to answer where to do your project)
• Specify the characteristics of the system intended users such as: age, education,..
• Specify the system context and environment.

1.4 Definitions of New Terms:

If new terms were introduced in the project

2. Background Information & Related Work:

• Background Information:
  • Outline and reference the sources of information you are drawing on (papers, books, websites, systems etc.) and state how each relates to your work.
  • Outline the software, tools, library code, frameworks and similar that you are using.
  • You should not include well-known things (e.g., HTML or Java) or try to give tutorials on how to use a tool or code library (use references to books and websites for that information).
  • Everything you include should be directly relevant to your work and the relationship made clear.

• Related Work Survey:

Write small paragraphs (2 to 3 lines), each describes one related work to yours and states some of its weakness and strength points.

• Proposed & Similar Systems Comparison:

Survey similar programs, systems or applications to yours, and how yours is differentiated by constructing a comparison table as follows:

3. System Analysis:

Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. It may involve the examination and evaluation of the relevant information to select the best course of action from among various alternatives. In your analysis, you should explain the following:  .

• Requirements specification

You should Define the project goals in terms of functionalities and operations of the intended application. This may be done in the light of the end-user information needs. So, based on nature of the project, this section should include at least one of the following:

• Description of the methods that have been used to gather the project requirements & data such as: surveys, questionnaires, interviews, Investigation, Sampling, observations or any other methods.
• A structured Algorithm listing accompanied with a definite description of the scope and objectives of the problem under study. The listing should clearly define the set of inputs and the expected outputs.

• Requirements Analysis:

This section should describe the results of analyzing the requirements to extract information as a structured list of requirements. So, based on nature of the project, you should include at least two of the following:

• data modeling to find the data to be stored (ER diagram),
• data flow diagrams
• data dictionary
• structured English
• decision trees/ tables
• Use cases (a use diagram and list of use case titles, with the full use cases appearing in the appendix) if needed.
• Software and hardware requirements (mandatory)
• Functional and nonfunctional requirements

4. System Design:

The process of defining modules, interfaces, and data of the project to satisfy specified requirements. Describe the design of what you are going to create.

• System Architecture:
  • Start with the application architecture, giving its overall structure and the components that make up that structure.
  • Give a description of the design of each of the components that make up the architecture including the database or storage representation.
  • Use any system design tools depending on your project nature to give more details on the system components such as UML diagrams, flowcharts, story boards,…etc.

• Choose from below:

User Interface Design:

Design the user interface of the system by prototyping of system screen shots to show the  main functionality of the system. You may use generic GUI tolls such as PowerPoint, FLASH, sketches/drawings, etc. If your system is based on ready-made packages or simulators, you may just include snap shots of the main modules you are actually using to produce results.

Frameworks/Models

Develop the cybersecurity frameworks or models that are adopted in your proposed solution. There are many cybersecurity frameworks that have been designed to identify and close security gaps. So, if you are using a cybersecurity framework or a model, explain how it can be used to address your problem. In addition, you might need to use Microsoft Visio, PowerPoint, Word, or other tools to visualize the frameworks or models.

Component Design & prototype:

After analyzing the problem, student should come up with a solution in terms of pseudo code and  software architecture followed by implementation, integration testing, and maintenance.  Hence, to build a software application prototype based on specific requirements which displays the functionality of the product under development.

5. Implementation
   • Implementation Requirements

Provide implementation requirements (software and hardware that will be used).

• Implementation Details: Give a brief description of how your system was actually implemented using the specified software and hard ware requirements. This may include snapshots of the major parts of the source code. The full source code could be attached as a separate appendix section.

• I/O Screens: Give a snapshot of main input & output screens showing the main system functionality.

6. Testing
   • Test plan: describe your testing strategy (unit, functional, acceptance testing) the scope, Features to be tested, schedules of test activities, Testing tasks.

• Test cases: list test cases that have been used to test features of your project. Examples of specific tests and how they were carried out. Focus on the interesting cases.

• Test results:

• A summary of the test results.
• The detailed test report(s) should appear in the appendix.

7. Conclusions:
   • Evaluation: A summary of what the project has achieved. A critical evaluation of the results of the project.

• Future work: How the project could be improved if you had another 6 months.

8. References

References should be written in the IEEE standard format for citation. For example:

• Author, “The paper title,” Journal name, vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 2702–2712, Dec. 2002.
• D. Another, Book title, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1998.

Appendices

The Information that is not essential to explain your findings, but that supports your analysis (especially repetitive or lengthy information), validates your conclusions or pursues a related point should be placed in an appendix (plural appendices). Examples of information that could be included in an appendix include figures/tables/charts/graphs of results, statistics, questionnaires, transcripts of interviews, pictures, lengthy derivations of equations, maps, drawings, letters, specification or data sheets, computer program information.

Each separate appendix should be lettered (Appendix A, Appendix B, Appendix C, etc). The order they are presented in is dictated by the order they are mentioned in the text of the report. It is essential to refer to each appendix within the text of the report.

 Template