BSc Final Year Project Report Guidelines

Introduction
As part requirement for the award of BSc (Hons) Computer Science & Engineering or
BSc (Hons) Information Systems (diploma/degree) at the University of Mauritius, a
project must normally be carried out by a student in his/her final year of study. The
project is a module that provides the student with the opportunity to design, undertake or
conduct an independent piece of research or study related to their Programme of Studies
under the guidance of a supervisor, who is normally a member of the academic staff (full-
time or part-time).

The project will carry 9 credits and will normally lasts for two semesters. A project report
should be submitted as part of the module and this should be complemented with a
project presentation and software demonstration.

The following section consists of a report structure and a guidance to write a good report
for Software Engineering projects and ensuring that essential parts are not missed out.
Note however that some parts may not be applicable to the project. As far as possible,
this guideline tries to depict the main sections.

Report Guideline
The report may be structured in the following way:

Title Page

Acknowledgements

Abstract

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

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Introduction

Background Study

Analysis

Design

Implementation

Integration & Testing

Conclusion

References

Appendix

A short outline for each sub-part is described below:

Title Page
As per the university’s regulations, the title page of the report shall give the following
information in the order listed:

Full title of the project as approved by the Department

The full name of the author

The qualification for which the report is submitted

The name of the institution to which the report is submitted

The Department in which the project is to be submitted

The month and year of submission.

A good title should be relevant, short & concise and catchy. A good title will attract
readers.

It should not:

Leave the reader guessing what it is about

Have spelling and grammatical errors

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Acknowledgements
This part is all about thanking those who have helped the student directly or indirectly on
the completion of the project. For example, the student’s supervisor, his/her team mate
and/or anyone who provided some funding etc. Remember to be courteous.

Abstract
This is one of the most important parts of the report. It should normally be written last.
It should be:

Short and concise (not longer than 250 words and rarely longer than one
paragraph)

State the objective

State the method used

State the results

State the conclusions

It should not:

Introduce anything new

Include references

If anything interesting has been found, it is important that it is mentioned it here because
after reading the abstract, the reader might decide to quit reading the project and he might
miss the superb result which is only revealed at the end.

Table of Contents
The table of contents is essential in any report as it helps the reader to go directly to
where he wants. It is important not to mislead the reader by indicating wrong page
number. Remember that a word processor’s ‘Style’ feature can be used to generate TOC,
LOF etc automatically.

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List of Tables

Clear indication and labels to the list of tables.

List of Figures

Clear indication and labels to the list of figures.

Preface
This section gives a brief outline of the different chapters to be covered. The aim of this
part is that the reader should understand the structure of the report after reading this

Introduction
The introduction part is another trigger for the reader. If after reading this part, the user is
not bored yet, it is already a good sign.

It should:

Present the problem under investigation

Indicate the Aims & Objectives of the project

Scope of project

Indicate a timeline for the project

Include the distribution of task

This part might sound like the abstract but it is much longer. It will most likely be a few
pages long.

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Background Study
The background study consists of the following:

Literature review

Critical appraisal of other people’s work

Investigation on what is going on in the student’s current field of interest and
related works carried out

Investigation of potential tools and technologies that can be used for project
implementation.
The student should be able to prove to other people that he/she have done some research
before embarking on the project.

Analysis
This section documents the analysis of the system to be implemented. It consists of the
following:

Feasibility Study (optional)

Functional and Technical Requirements

Alternative ways of solving the problem

Proposed Solution with reasons

Evaluation of tools – Pros and Cons

Choice of Final Tool(s) with justification

Detailed description of the system

Functional Modeling of the system - Data Flow Diagram

Design
The Design section documents the design decisions that have been taken. The structure of
the system and its components has to be established.

The various system design issues that have to be addressed are:

Software Design Approach

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Performance

Robustness

Interactivity

Flexibility

Re-usability & portability

Quality of Service

Error, Exception Handling & Fault Tolerance

Security
The design should also consist of the following:

Architectural Design - Interaction between components and/or modules

Interface Design

System Modeling- Object Modeling/UML diagrams, ERD

Database Design

Implementation
The implementation section describes how the different components in the project have
been implemented. It should also consist of:

Developments tools and environment used

Implementation of different modules (including detail steps about how they were
developed)

Sample codes (including standards and conventions)

Difficulties faced and how they were addressed.
Moreover, the implementation issues that have been addressed can be discussed:

Performance

Consistency

Scalability

Security issues

Real-Time issues

Concurrency Control

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Flexibility

Adaptability

Fault-Tolerance

Integration and Testing

Testing starts alongside with the Implementation. The testing part will document the
testing carried out – the test data and the results obtained. When independent modules
have been implemented and tested, they can be integrated and tested as a whole.

Different types of testing Carried out:

Unit Test – testing a single component

Integration Testing – Combining different components

System test – Testing the system as a whole

User acceptance test – user perspective of the system to check if requirements
have been met.

Note that the student should be able to provide details about how the above tests have
been carried out and not just list them. A test script could be used to demonstrate this. It
would be very helpful if the student starts documenting the tests carried out together with
their test results during the Implementation stage itself.

Conclusion
This is usually the last chapter in the report which contains three main parts:

Achievements:
It should critically assess the work done including the strengths and weaknesses and
try to explain the results obtained.

Difficulties:
The difficulties can also be summarized. Keep in mind that the conclusion should not
be overcritical or sound depressing.

Future Works:

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 No report is totally complete or has completely explored a domain. The student can
give some indications where future work might be carried out or what other domain
the student would have explored without the current time/resource constraints.

References
It is a major offence to copy the work of others without properly referencing. This
practice is termed as “plagiarism”. It is the equivalent of theft in the academic world. It is
therefore very important that the student adds proper references at the end of his/her
report and to add proper links of those references to his/her report. References are
important because they acknowledge the work of others and prove that the student has
done enough investigation.

There are two types of copying:

Copying whole paragraphs

Using the idea of someone else

Different styles are needed depending on what the student is referencing:

Books

Articles in journals

Web pages

Discussion groups

The reference system used at the university is the Harvard System. It is a very popular
referencing system and is widely utilized. Students are advised to follow the University
of Mauritius guidelines on the matter.
(http://www.uom.ac.mu/Admissions/Calendar/regulations/CHAP7.pdf ).

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The Harvard System
The references section should include a list of references. The references for the
following items should be written as follows:

1. For books
Author’s SURNAME, INITIALS., Year of publication. Title. Edition (if not the
first). Place of publication: Publisher.

e.g. MERCER, P.A. AND SMITH, G., 1993. Private viewdata in the UK. 2nd ed.
London: Longman.

2. For journal/newspaper articles

Author’s SURNAME, INITIALS., (or NEWSPAPER TITLE,) Year of
publication. Title of article. Title of newspaper, Day and month, Page number/s
and column number.

e.g INDEPENDENT, 1992. Picking up the bills. Independent, 4 June, p.28a.

3. For articles in a journal

Author’s SURNAME, INITIALS., Year of publication. Title of article. Title of
journal, Volume number and (part number), Page numbers of contribution.

e.g. EVANS, W.A., 1994. Approaches to intelligent information retrieval.

Information processing and management, 7 (2), 147-168.

4. Conference Paper
Contributing author’s SURNAME, INITIALS., Year of publication. Title of
contribution. Followed by In: INITIALS. SURNAME, of editor of proceedings (if
applicable) followed by ed. Title of conference proceedings including date and

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 place of conference. Place of publication: Publisher, Page numbers of
contribution.

e.g. SILVER, K., 1991. Electronic mail: the new way to communicate. In: D.I.
RAITT, ed. 9th international online information meeting, 3-5 December 1990
London. Oxford: Learned Information, 323-330.

5. For a thesis
Author’s SURNAME, INITIALS., Year of publication. Title of thesis.
Designation, (and type). Name of institution to which submitted.

e.g. AGUTTER, A.J., 1995. The linguistic significance of current British slang.
Thesis (PhD). Edinburgh University.

6. For a film/video or broadcast

Title, Year. (For films the preferred date is the year of release in the country of
production.) Material designation. Subsidiary originator. (Optional but director is
preferred, SURNAME in capitals) Production details – place: organisation.

e.g. Macbeth, 1948. Film. Directed by Orson WELLES. USA: Republic Pictures.
e.g. Birds in the Garden, 1998. Video. London: Harper Videos.

7. Web
Author's /Editor's SURNAME, INITIALS., Year. Title [online]. (Edition). Place
of publication, Publisher (if ascertainable). Available from: URL [Accessed
Date].
e.g. HOLLAND, M., 2004. Guide to citing Internet sources [online]. Poole,
Bournemouth University. Available from: http://www.bournemouth.ac.uk/library/
using/guide_to_citing_internet_sourc.html [Accessed 4 November 2004].

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8. CD ROM/DVD
Author's SURNAME, INITIALS., Year. Title [type of medium CD-ROM].
(Edition). Place of publication, Publisher (if ascertainable). Available from:
Supplier/Database identifier or number (optional) [Accessed Date] (optional).

e.g. HAWKING, S.W., 1994. A brief history of time: an interactive adventure.

[CDROM]. Crunch Media.

Example of a reference list:

[His02] HISINGER, D., NEYRET, F. and CANI, M.P. 2002. Interactive
Animation of Ocean Waves. In Symposium on Computer Animation

[Jen 01] JENSEN, L. and GOLIAS, R. 2001. Deep-Water Animation and

Rendering. In Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/gdce/2001/jensen/jensen_01.htm

[Jes03] JESCHKE, S., BIRKHOLZ, H. and SCHUMANN, H. 2003. A Procedural

Model for Interactive Animation of Breaking Ocean Waves. In WSCG POSTERS
Proceedings

[Pea86] PEACHEY, D.R. 1986. Modelling Waves and Surf. In ACM

SIGGRAPH Proceedings, Vol. 20, No.4, pp. 65-74

The student should use some consistent system of coding his/her references so people can
refer to them easily from the main report. This may take the form of a simple numbering
system where a superscripted number is appended to the actual point of reference in the
body of the text and a numerical listing of the detailed references is placed at the end of
the project (or at the end of each chapter).

For more details about the Harvard Referencing style, the following link might be
helpful:

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http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/files/Harvard_referencing.pdf

http://www.imperial.ac.uk/Library/pdf/Harvard_referencing.pdf

Appendix
It contains things that could not be directly included in the report but which will
nevertheless help the reader gain a better understanding of the project if included.

It usually includes:

Part of the code

Data sets

Algorithms

Extra illustrations (charts, barcharts, photos)

Surveys

Forms and templates

Final Note
The objective of this guide is to help students write a better report for their project. It has
often been the case that students implement excellent software but due to poor quality of
their report, their grades are lowered. Moreover, it is important to note that this is just a
Guide. It should not be used word to word if certain parts do not apply for the student’s
project. Feel free to add new elements which the student feels should form part of the
student’s report. In case of doubts, please contact the student’s Project Supervisor.

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