Writing Your ProjectSadiki Lameck KusyamaNovember 2014Overview

Writing Your Project
Sadiki Lameck Kusyama
November, 2014

Overview

 Structure
 Content
 Writing
 Formatting
 Submission

2

Structure (1)

 First decide the structure of your dissertation: how it will be divided into chapters (and appendices).  You might decide to subdivide some chapters into sections.
 You might even subdivide some sections into sub-sections. – But avoid sub-sub-sections!

3

Example: structure (1)

 Typical structure for a development project:

Chapters

Appendices

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
A
B
C

Title page
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Table of Contents
Introduction
Survey
Requirements
Design
Implementation
Evaluation
Conclusion
Requirements
Design Documents
Evaluation Results
Bibliography
4

Example: structure (2)

 Typical structure for a research project:

Chapters

Appendices

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
A
B

Title page
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Table of Contents
Introduction
Survey
…
…
…
Evaluation
Conclusion
…
…
Bibliography
5

Structure (2)

 Expand your structure into a synopsis. Under each chapter title, write brief notes summarising what the chapter will cover.
 Use the synopsis to check:
– that all essential topics are covered
– that no topic is covered twice
– that the topics are covered in an orderly fashion
(avoiding forward references where possible).

 Ask your supervisor to comment on your synopsis before you start writing chapters.
6

Example: synopsis

 Possible synopsis for a development project:
1

2
3

4

Introduction
Context; motivation for the project; problem statement; outline of dissertation. Survey
Review of relevant literature; review of similar software products.
Requirements
How requirements were captured; discussion of major requirements (referring to Appendix A for details).
Design
How the product was designed, with discussion of design alternatives (referring to Appendix B for details).
…
7

Content

 Title page
 Abstract
 Table of contents
 Development project dissertation
 Research project dissertation
