CS 8317 (Spring 2023): Course Project
Project assignment
You project is the most important part of your CS 8317.
It demonstrates 1) your mastery and deep understanding
of the course material,
2) your ability to apply newly acquired knowledge/skills in
solving a practical problem and/or to conduct individual
original research on a relevant topic,
and
3) your ability to communicate, through presentation as well as writing,
the important activities/experience/results/findings/etc. of your project work.
It will consist of the following three parts:
-
A project proposal:
due on 1/21/2023, with an informal oral presentation of
the project proposal/ideas in class on 1/20/2023 followed by
discussions in class and feedback from the instructor.
-
A project presentation:
to be given in one of the last two classes
(2/17/2023, less likely because of the exam/quiz schedule for the same day,
or more likely 3/3/2023),
followed by
discussions in class and feedback from the instructor
(so that you may revise/improve your project report).
The presentation slides are due before your presentation date.
-
A final project report: due on 3/6/2023.
The details are given below.
Acceptable types of projects
The project will be an application of a specific technique
(could be a new one created/developed/adapted/improved/perfected
by you through your original research)
in software reliability engineering or software safety engineering
discussed in class and a report of the experience and related
(new) findings.
Alternatively, but probably less likely,
it can be an original research on a topic related to SRE or SSE,
similar to one that can be a (draft) paper publishable in a relevant
conference or even a professional journal
(see for example, many of the papers we will study in our class).
As a concrete example of a project,
you may collect testing data from one of your company's project,
fit various reliability models to assess the product reliability,
reliability change/growth,
test effectiveness, and identify problematic areas for focused
reliability/quality/productivity improvement.
Another example
is a comprehensive analysis (FTA, ETA, FMEA, etc.)
of some (potential) safety problems
in the embedded system you are working on,
and a plan to address those problems
via various safety assurance techniques applied to pre-release
software development or post-release in-field support.
Sometimes, a "mixed" type of project may also be possible.
For example,
you may perform some details defect analysis that may support
both SRE and SSE related activities,
or extension of SRE and/SSE to include not only reliability
and/or safety aspects (which should still be the focus in
this case) but also other quality/dependability aspects
such as usability, availability, security, etc.
In performing the above tasks,
you might be required to do some individual research
by searching through technical literature to find relevant
papers and study them,
with the ultimate goal of adopting/adapting/developing
some relevant models/techniques covered in those papers,
or even create/develop your own
(with good results, that would definitely be worth publishing!
-- see the comments about original research project above).
Individual or team project:
Students may form a team to do a project if it is of
a larger scale/scope that requires team effort
(must be well justified).
However, given the limited time to do the project,
it is highly unlikely that a project in the scope that requires a team
of 3 or more members is realistic for our class.
Project Proposal
You project proposal should be around 3-5 double spaced pages
in length, and should include the following information:
- an informative project title
- an abstract or executive summary
- some basic background information,
- clearly identify the problem that you are going to address,
or topic area for your original research,
- the solution strategy you intend to use
(which implementation approach? which analysis/modeling technique? etc.)
- a rough schedule
- expected results,
- analysis of result to be performed,
- followup actions,
In case of a group project,
please also provide information regarding roles and responsibilities.
Project presentation
To be given in one of the last two classes
(2/17/2023 or 3/3/2023).
Presentation slides are due the day before your presentation date
(most likely 3/2/2023 for most of you).
We will have discussions during/after your presentation,
with some specific feedback from the instructor.
Additional feedback might be provided as comments to the submitted
slides on Canvas.
Project report
A project report should be around 15 double-spaced pages in length,
and clearly and comprehensively describes the background,
problem, strategy, activities, results, result analysis,
lessons learned, followup actions, and summary/conclusions.
A high level (executive) summary or an abstract must be included
at the beginning of your report.
The most recent papers from our research group available on Canvas
can serve as examples/samples of your project report.
Format: see the sequence of required information
for the project proposal above,
but with much more details about the solution, results, analysis,
and new sections/subsections for
discussion, lessons learned, and conclusions.
Please use clearly marked sections (and subsections, if necessary,
but not more than 2 levels).
Important models/techniques/results should be summarized in the
main report text,
and highlighted in tables and/or figures,
accompanied by relevant discussions, whenever appropriate.
Do not include raw data in the main text.
But you may include them in the appendix and
not counted towards your page quote.
Data summary may be appropriate for the main text.
Prepared by Jeff Tian
(tian@engr.smu.edu).
Posted: Jan. 5, 2023.
Last update: Jan. 5, 2023.