Project Plan -- Feedback 2018
On the whole the project plans were well-prepared and the average mark across the groups was 9.75 (65%).
Each group will have received a mark sheet for their report with individual comments, but here we summarise some general feedback that may you further understand your mark, and help you prepare your future reports.
Some common strengths that improved the mark:
- Introduction provided some concrete background information on the need for the proposed system, better still if this was supported by data/external sources appropriately cited
- There was discussion of relevant existing robot solutions for the task
- There was a real user story (a vivid description of a particular person using the system to complete a particular task)
- The milestone description gave a clear impression of exactly what the client should expect to see at each stage
- The milestones included quantitative estimates, e.g. expected speed or accuracy of the system
- Explicit time estimates were made for the amount of work need to achieve subtasks
- The Gantt chart or planning was clearly related to the available person hours
- The Gantt chart indicated the full range of dependencies
- The Gantt chart plausible division of work amongst subgroups
- There was a description and analysis of the skills and interests of the team members to justify their allocation to subtasks
- The structure included some oversight or overlap to increase the resilience of the team to absences or unforeseen sitautions
- There was a description of the physical as well as the human resources available
- The estimated budget was presented and justified
- The report had a heading/cover page that included the names of the group and the mentor and client
- The report had pictures of mock-ups of the intended robot design
Some common weaknesses that decreased the mark:
- It was not obvious from the task description why a robot rather than a tablet or phone based app was a good approach to the described problem
- The milestone description did not clarify how the demonstrator would scale down and simplify the problem (particularly in cases where solving the real problem would clearly be too ambitious)
- The scaled down problem was clearly described but lacked key elements of the original problem, thus potentially making it unconvincing as a demonstrator
- The milestones lacked the strengths described above
- The Gantt chart lacked the strengths described above, particularly there was sometimes just a sequence of high level tasks to be achieved by the whole team -- this is not a Gantt chart
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