CSE 403 project: Project proposal

Overview

1. Develop an exciting product idea with one or two other students. As you develop your vision, think about who is your customer, what is the problem you are trying to solve, and what is your solution. The project should be appropriate for a 6-person CSE 403 team to complete in 8 weeks.
2. Write a 1-2 page proposal document.
3. Prepare a 4-slide slideshow, and present it to the whole class.
4. View other students’ proposals and rank them (including your own) by which project you would prefer to work on.
   
5. The staff will use these rankings to organize project teams, taking into account project and teammate preferences.

Setup

Select one or two other students to work together with you on a proposal. You can leverage the class discussion board to find a partner, as well as attend section on Tuesday where the staff will help form partnerships. If you don’t have a partner after section on Tuesday, contact the 403 staff immediately so we can help connect you with another student.

Create your pitch

First, develop an interesting project idea. You want to convince a venture capitalist that your project is worth funding.

1. Write a 2 page proposal (PDF)

Here is information that you should include in your document.

• Start with a short and catchy project title and your full names.
• Abstract: The first paragraph of your document must be an abstract (or executive summary, or TL;DR) that explains your project at a high level. If someone read nothing but that one paragraph, what do you want them to know?
• Goal: What are you trying to do? For example, who are your target customers, what problem will your product help them with, and how?
• Current practice: How is the task/problem solved today, and what are the limits of current practice?
• Novelty: What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be more successful than other approaches? Do not reinvent the wheel or reimplement something that already exists, unless your approach is different.
• Impact: Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
• Technical approach: Briefly describe your proposed technical approach. This may include what system architecture, technologies, and tools you may use.
• Risks: What is the single most serious challenge or risk you foresee with developing your product on time? How will you minimize or mitigate the risk? Don’t state generic risks that would be equally applicable to any project, like “we might run out of time”.

2. Create a 4-page slideshow presentation (PDF)

• Present your project idea at a higher level compared to your proposal document.
• Start with your project name and your full names.
• Focus on the essentials. You have very little time, so don’t dive deep into technical details.
• You have two goals: to convince the venture capitalists (the CSE 403 staff) to approve the project, and to attract software developers (other CSE 403 students) to join the project. Don’t include details that do not pertain to those two goals.

  Structure of the slide deck:

• Your slide deck must have exactly 4 content slides, including the title slide.
• The first slide should start with the project title and your full names. It may or may not contain other content.
• Your slides must include at least one diagram or figure.

3. Submit to Canvas.

• You will submit two PDF documents to Canvas.
• Name your proposal document [projectname]_[last name]_[last name].pdf.
• Name your slide deck [projectname]_[last name]_[last name]_slides.pdf.

Present your proposal, and listen to other proposals

• The proposals will be presented in class (see the Calendar).
• All proposal members must participate in your presentation.
• You will have 3 minutes (updated to 3!). The staff will cut you off at that time if you have not finished. Practice your delivery beforehand to ensure it fits the time!

Rank your preferences

• A link to the proposals will be provided for your review. You may find it helpful to read some or all of the abstracts. You may want to reach out to members of the class (e.g., on the message board) for clarifications and discussions).

• Rank project pitches by which project you would prefer to work on. You can, but do not have to, include your own project as one you want to work on.

• You must fill all the blanks in the ranking. That is, you will have a #1 choice, and a #2 choice, etc. Do not list just your two or three most preferred projects, as they may not be the projects selected to move forward. Do not choose a project that you do not have the resources to complete. For example, don’t choose an iOS app if you don’t have a Mac and an iPhone. Don’t choose an Android app if you don’t have an Android phone.

• You may indicate at most one to two preferred teammates.

Fill out and submit the form of project and team preferences. Full instructions are in the form.

FAQ

Will my grade depend on whether my project is chosen?

• No. Your grade is not based upon whether your project is chosen (by other students or by the 403 staff) to be implemented. Rather, your grade is based on the quality of your materials and your presentation. We will be evaluating whether you have addressed the identified project elements, made reasonable judgments concerning them, and organized and pitched your proposal well.

Do I have to work on the project that I proposed?

• No. Your ranking does not have to include your own pitch, if you are more excited about other teams’ ideas. Also, you do not need to work with your proposal partner.

How many people can work together on a project?

• We will aim for groups of 5-6 students per project. If a project proposal is particularly popular, it is possible that more than one group can work on the same project idea – with a different focus or technical approach.

How will you create the project groups?

• We will try to give you one of your top project choices, based on your project ranking.
• If a set of students submitted identical group members and project preferences, we will try to keep those students together.
• We will select projects that we believe will be a good fit for the class (scope, resources, etc.), and for which students are interested in developing.
• We will avoid assigning you a project that we think will not be successful in the class, based on our experience.

How should I describe current practice?

• You should spend nearly as much time understanding what already exists as you do coming up with something new. For example, don’t propose to develop a web search engine without knowing that Google exists. You could propose, however, some search engine features that you believe would be useful and that Google doesn’t provide.
• Clearly explain what differentiates your project from the alternatives. Differentiate the top-level objectives, target customers, scope, and technical approach of your product from existing, alternative products. Indicate what is novel about your proposed features. Don’t belabor features that are standard in existing packages.
• Also, indicate how the proposed project poses interesting design (or other) challenges from a software engineering point of view.

Any advice regarding writing and presentation? Excellent question! Here are some tips:

• Clearly motivate the need for your product. Who are your customers and what problem are you solving for them?

• Be specific and give examples – whether you are explaining a problem or a solution.

• Include mockups if you are proposing a system with a GUI.

• Make your slides simple and readable. Make sure your fonts are large enough to be easily read from the back of the room; there is sufficient contrast between the text and background color; and the slides are free of distracting design elements (such as background images or slide template graphics).

• Put the take-home points on the slides, in telegraphic form (no full sentences). You can use these as memory joggers during the presentation. Your live presentation should go beyond what’s on the slides (instead of reading the slides, expand on the points) - keep your slides simple and readable.

• Use color effectively, but be aware that some people do not see the full color spectrum. Highlight the key points to draw the reader’s eye and indicate what really matters about the slide. Use similar colors for related things.