The Postgraduate Project-V51

8/13/2019 The Postgraduate Project-V51

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School of Engineering & Computing Sciences

The Postgraduate Project Page 2 of 21

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The purpose of the project is to provide you with the opportunity to conduct a substantial

piece of academic, scientific or engineering work as an individual initiative, and to document

this as a set of scholarly reports. The final paper will demonstrate your analytical and

reflective skills as well as your abilities in written communication. The overall aim is to draw

together knowledge, skills and techniques that have been learned throughout the MScprogramme.

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The work for the project as well as the assessment is actually spread across two modules. The

module onResearch Methods and Professional Issuesis a standard 15-credit module that

prepares you for your project by teaching about project-related issues, including how to

conduct a project and how to evaluate it. The main Project module (60 credits) then takes

place after all of the taught modules are completed.

For theResearch Methods and Professional Issuesmodule, the assessment elements consist

of your project plan together with a state of the art literature report that you are required toprepare for the topic of your project. For the Projectmodule, the assessment is through

presentations of your work, together with a 20-page technical paper (dissertation). Although

these modules are linked by one theme (your project) they are quite separate and are assessed

separately.

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There will be at least three people involved in the assessment of your project, reflecting its

importance in the overall final mark (the project counts for 60 credits out of a total of 180

credits needed for the award of an MSc). These are: your supervisor, an additional internal

examiner, and the External Examiner who is responsible for overseeing the standards of the

MSc programme.

The assessment criteria for the project module are described in Section 2.7. You will receive

formative assessment feedback before and during the project period through the regular

supervisory meetings between student and supervisor. In addition, during the summer

vacation period a compulsory bench test (demonstration) will be scheduled, where you will

be asked to demonstrate, with the aid of a computer, what you have achieved by that point.

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The project module is timetabled to run through the summer vacation period. You are

normally required to be resident in Durham through all of this time. If, during this period,

you need to be away, then this should be discussed with the MSc Course Director and your

supervisor well in advance. In addition, for any period of absence you should:

Agree meeting times with your supervisor beforeyou leave Inform the School about how we can get in contact with you during the time that you

are away from Durham

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Providing clear evidence of the application of knowledge, skills and critical facultieslearned from the rest of the programme (this is the single most important criterion)

Performing a comprehensive and thorough literature review and presenting this in aknowledgeable and analytical manner

Producing a deliverable of good quality that is well tested, and with full presentationof its features

A coherent and well organised assessment and evaluation of the outcomes of theproject, using appropriate forms and measures

Clear conclusions from the work that you have undertaken, including a reflectivepresentation of the successes (and limitations) of the work

A demonstration of good communication and presentational skills together with anappreciation and understanding of professional issues.


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This section addresses the important procedures and regulations that apply to conducting the

project. Detailed questions about project procedures should normally be addressed to your

supervisor.

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This section details the deliverables for both theResearch Methods and Professional Issues

module and also the Projectmodule. The reason for this is that they are meant to form part of

a progressive development and are best shown together.

1. For theResearch Methods and Professional Issuesmodule, the deliverables willconsist of the following two documents:

a. An Overviewdocument, maximum of four (4) pages, comprised of:i. A structured abstract

ii. A project specification (including descriptions of the three levels ofdeliverable: basic; intermediate; and advanced)

iii. A project plan (including an evaluation plan and timetable)b. A State of the Artreport, length 6-10 pages, structured as:

i. The review method: describing how relevant books and papers havebeen identified and selected for the review

ii. A review and summary of the selected books and papers, usually for4-5 of the topics associated with the project, providing a

background for the project

iii. A bibliography section of 15-20+ references, normally with no morethan three references to web sites

2. For the Projectitself, the deliverables will consist of:a. Bench Test 1: which is a progress review that takes place in the summer,

where students are expected to present a summary of progress to their

supervisor, and where they should be prepared to discuss:

i. The main functions of their softwareii.

How the functions are represented in the design

iii. Elements of good design practice usediv. Problems encountered and how they were overcomev. Plans for completing the project

b. Bench Test 2: This is an oral examination and software demonstration thattakes place in one of the University buildings at the beginning of September,

and before any marking of the remaining deliverables described below. This

normally takes place with both examiners present, and a student should

demonstrate the software that they have produced. They should expect to

present to an audience that has knowledge of the subject, but not necessarily

detailed knowledge of the specific project. It is the task of the student to lead


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the oral examination and explain their achievements in terms of the

objectives, with suitable illustrations.

c. A Technical Reportof not more than 20 pages (the format for this is providedin the next section) note that the length guidelines will be adhered to

strictly, and that markers will ignore any pages after the first 20

d. Any software produced for the project, along with test/evaluation datae. The project log book

Suitable templates will be provided for the Technical Report in bothMS WordandLaTeX

formats.

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The format of the project report should conform to the template provided. It should not be

longer than 20 pages in length and consists of four main elements:

1. A title and preamble, with the latter identifying the student, supervisor and degreeprogramme.

2. The abstract. This should be structured in form (see Appendix A) and will typicallybe around half a page in length.

3. The main body. This will consist of a set of sections as specified in the template. Wehave provided suggestions for the length limits of each sections, but overall, the

report must not be more than 20 pages in length.

4. The references. These should be in Harvard (author, date) format. The number ofreferences will obviously depend upon the nature of the project, but we would

normally expect a minimum of ten references. Where possible, you should avoid

using references to web sites, and if this is necessary, should ensure that they are

correctly cited.

It is particularly important that you note the requirements of length as only the first 20 pages

will be taken into consideration when marking the project.

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There are two sets of deadlines.

1. For the deliverables that form part of theResearch Methods and Professional Issuesmodule, the deadlines are the same as for any other module. These must besubmitted via DUO on the last day of the module.

2. For the deliverables that form part of the Projectmodule, the report and any otherrelevant material must be submitted via DUO on the date specified by the Graduate

School and no later than 4pm. Late reports will not be accepted without a penalty,

unless a medical certificate is supplied. If a project is submitted after the deadline,

the University-wide scheme for applying penalties to late work will be applied. In

particular, machine or word-processing problems will not be accepted as an excuse

for late submission.

Students are reminded that all software produced as part of the course (including projectwork) is the property of the University.


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Students are required to provide a signed declaration on paper that is worded as follows:

I declare that all assessed work to be submitted for my degree will be the results of

my own work except where group work is involved. In the case of a group project,

the work will be prepared in collaboration with other members of the group. In allother cases, material from the work of others will be suitably acknowledged and all

quotations and paraphrasing will be suitably indicated.

Within the project report and all other documents you must clearly acknowledge any work

that is included that is not original (i.e. your own), including making clear how much, if any,

of the code of your project is not original. If necessary, any declarations that materials

(documents and/or source code) are not your own unaided work should also be included. All

references to the work of others, published or otherwise, should be clearly identified in the

text using quotation marks and citation.

Regardless of whether or not your project, and its evaluation in particular, involves human

participants, you should also complete anEthical Approval Formfor your project. (A short

version of this is available for taught postgraduate projects and is described in Appendix B.)

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A successful project requires that both student and supervisor work effectively together.

Responsibilities of the supervisorare:

To provide guidance about the nature of the project and the standard expected, aboutplanning of the project, about literature and sources, about techniques and methods,

including ethical issues, and about any questions regarding plagiarism

To maintain contact via regular supervision meetings To be accessible within reason at other times for providing advice to the student To give detailed advice on project milestones To ensure that a student is made aware of any inadequacy of progress, or of standards

of work that fall below what is expected

To encourage the student to produce early draft sections, to comment on themcritically, and to return the comments within recommended feedback timescales. (It

is the students responsibility to do this.)

Responsibilities of the studentare:

To agree on a schedule of meetings with the supervisor and to attend such meetingsor provide adequate notice if meetings need to be postponed

To take initiative in raising problems, however elementary these may seem To maintain the progress of the work in accordance with the milestones and the

objectives agreed with the supervisor

To plan the project and to monitor progress against the plan To keep a project log for recording results, ideas, references etc., where these are

acquired as the project proceeds


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To determine the contents of the report and of any oral presentationsIn summary, the management of the project and the course that it takes are ultimately your

responsibility, with the supervisor acting as a guide.

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Both the MSc Viva (Bench Test 2) and the final technical paper are marked. The MSc Viva is

worth 20% of the total project marks, and the final technical paper is worth 80% of the total

project marks. The work described for the design and implementation (results) in the final

technical paper must reflect the software that was demonstrated in the MSc Viva. The final

technical paper will be marked using the following allocation of marks.

Structured Abstract(5%) which should: Provide a clear summary of the key points from your paper Be capable of being used as a stand-alone description of the report

Introduction(5%), should clearly present the rationale for undertaking this particularstudy, and the question(s) that it is seeking to answer.

Related Work(10%), where this should demonstrate: A good knowledge of the relevant literature and research findings,

demonstrating their influence upon the approach taken

A clear strategy for finding that informationNote that this needs to be different to the presentation used in the State of the Art

report.

Solution(20%), (a chapter which is essentially a mix of research method and designissues), looking for evidence of:

Adequacy of the solution (architecture/design) adopted Problem-solving ability Provision of a rationale for specific design/strategy choices

Results(20%), looking for evidence of: Adequacy of the description of the results (including implementation) Discussion of implementation issues encountered Discussion of, and outcomes from, your testing strategy and related issues

Evaluation(20%), looking for evidence of: The evaluation strategy adopted and its suitability for your task Assessment of any limitations upon conclusions Identification of any threats to validity for the outcomes

Conclusion(10%), which should discuss the outcomes and link them to the initialquestion, together with any recommendations for further work.

Management of project work (10%), a mark allocated by the supervisorIt is necessary to submit a technical paper in order to obtain a pass in the project module.


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This chapter describes how you should undertake your project.

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Meetings with your supervisor will occur during the following three phases. For each phasethe purpose and frequency of meetings will be different.

1. During the period of theResearch Methods and Professional Issuesmodule youshould have four meetings. During this period, your main task is to produce the

project plan and the state of the art report, as well as to undertake the tasks associated

with the state of the art report.

2. Between the end of theResearch Methods and Professional Issuesmodule and thestart of the main project period you should meet approximately every four weeks.

During this period you should refine the project aims; plan how you will implement

the overall plan for the project, and undertake any necessary background activities

(obtaining software, learning to use new tools, programming languages etc.)However, the main focus should be on the other MSc modules that you follow in this

period and you should notspend less time on these.

3. Over the summer period you should meet at regular intervals (preferably weeklywhenever possible).

Meetings should last approximately 30

minutes. It is expected that you will take the

lead for each session, providing your

supervisor with a summary of what has been

achieved since the last meeting. You should

then work together to identify what activities

you should be undertaking to prepare for the

next meeting.

For each meeting the supervisor or student

should complete a project report form. You

should retain this form as part of your project

log. Your supervisor and the School Office

should also have a copy.

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The work of the project builds upon the plan developed as part of theResearch Methods and

Professional Issuesmodule, as well as drawing upon the state of the art report that youproduced for this. This means that at the start of the project you should be well positioned to

concentrate on the development tasks. Here, we briefly identify some expectations of these.

The Design. The design task for a project usually centres upon software design,although some of the later elements such as evaluation also involve a design element.

So, activities will include:

Selection of an appropriate design technique or strategy to be employed Development of a design specification that provides an efficient and

extendable solution for the given task

Important Note: If you get into

difficulties with your project work, e.g.

you feel that you face insurmountable

problems, or you feel that your progress

is inadequate, you mustcontact your

supervisor or the Director of your

postgraduate programme, or the

Dissertation module coordinator. Do not

take any hasty action that you may later

have cause to regret. Do not take short

cuts, or attempt to disguise any problems

with your project work or report.


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Use of good software engineering practices such as modularity, reuse,traceability to the requirements etc.

Generation of an implementation plan Implementation. This involves realising the design using appropriate tools and

processes. It may include addressing technical challenges as well as considering userneeds such as usability and user expectations. Activities include:

Use of good development practices such as incremental development Use of appropriate configuration management and versioning strategies and

supporting these through the use of software tools

Software testing. This is concerned with ensuring that the implementation bothfunctions as intended and also that it meets the user needs. Testing should always

involve some form of test oracle to predict the outcomes of a test in order to provide

a baseline for testing. Testing activities include:

Defining an appropriate set of test cases(and predicted outcomes) that willexercise different features of the implementation

Maintaining a record of outcomes, highlighting any actions taken in responseto problems that were identified during testing

Evaluation. Project evaluation requires both the identification of a suitable strategyand then the development of an evaluation plan. This aspect will be covered in

greater detail as part of theResearch Methods and Professional Issuesmodule. Note

that every student must complete anEthical Approval Formregardless of whether

they will be using human participants as part of their evaluation process. (See

Appendix B.)

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Use diagrams in your report. Even informal diagrams can help show how elementsof your project fit together, and can provide the basis for a clear and concise textual

description. Do explain the use of symbols (lines, boxes etc.) in any diagrams.

Pay due attention to style and grammar. In particular, do not use the first personsingular, such as I did, or by me.

Ensure that the report has an appropriate level of academic content and is not just adescription of an implementation. In particular, do not make unsubstantiated

assertions (e.g. most users of the internet make use of) and ensure that any

conclusions are logically linked to your results.

Try to ensure a consistent level of abstraction in your report, avoiding excessive detail (or a

complete absence of any). Put yourself into the shoes of the reader who is not familiar with

you or with your project. A report should form a narrative that takes the reader through the

stages of your project from the first ideas (why do this) to the outcomes of final evaluation

(was it successful to have done it?).

Every project sets out to investigate something within a particular context, and hence isseeking to answer some form of question (we usually try to provide a concise statement of

this in the introduction and refer to it as the research question). You should ensure that at

the end of your report you report back on your findings about the research question (this is

very rarely a yes or no answer).


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The purpose of this module, and of its summative assessed work, is to provide you with the

opportunity to plan your project and to agree with your supervisor about its deliverables. In

this section, we first discuss the issue of conducting a literature review to identify the booksand papers relevant to your project, and then briefly describe the main features of the

deliverables.

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There are different approaches that can be used to undertaking a literature review, and the one

that you use should be that which is most suitable for the project that you are undertaking. At

one extreme, a review can be conducted as a systematic review, using formalised search

strings and a pre-selected group of electronic databases of papers. At the other, it can be an

expert review that is largely based upon papers that are identified by your supervisor as being

particularly relevant. In many cases it will fall between these, with your supervisor

suggesting where key literature might be found, search strings that might help, etc.

This aspect of the review will be addressed in theResearch Methods & Professional Issues

module and will not be repeated in this document. However, the following aspects of how

you undertook your review will need to be noted and reported.

If you have searched electronic databases of papers, you should ensure that yourreport describes which databases, and the search strings that were employed for each

one. You should also note the criteria that you used to determine which papers and

books were relevant to your needs.

The provenance of the material found needs to be established. For published booksand papers this is not a problem (for example, for a journal paper you will need to

identify which journal, the volume, issues, year, pagination etc.) Information that is

only available on the web, perhaps as a technical report or similar, needs to be treated

with care. Again, details of how to cite such material will be covered in the module.

If you have undertaken some experimental work with particular software packages ortools, in order to determine whether or not they might be used in your project, you

should again give appropriate details.

These elements are an important element of context for your review and for any analysis that

you might perform in this.

:"5 Q%-;1) %< )*+ D>+->'+& 3%/H;+2)The purpose of the Overviewdocument is to provide a concise summary of what you are

going to do for your project. It should contain the following elements (see also Section 2.1).

1. A structured abstract. Details of this are provided in Appendix A to this document.For the overview document only the first three recommended headings need to be

used (since there are no results at this stage and no conclusion).

2. A Project Specification. This is intended to identify what your project is setting outto do, how you will know when this has been achieved (i.e. what measures apply and

hence can demonstrate that the aims have been met), and how you expect to

demonstrate this (e.g. what software you expect to produce and its functionality). In

particular, the specification should clearly identify a set of deliverablesfrom theproject at the levels of basic(just sufficient for a passing grade if everything works


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can be demonstrated and is well documented); intermediate; and advanced(the sort

of things that a project being undertaken at distinction level might produce and report

upon).

3. The Project Plan. This is essentially your strategy for producing the deliverables andwill include a timetable with some milestones as well as an outline plan for how you

will evaluate your project to demonstrate what has been achieved.

This document should be a maximum of four pages in length and use of typefaces, headings

etc. should conform to the template provided.

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This document is intended to provide the underpinnings for the Overviewdocument. For

details of length etc., see Section 2.1. As with the Overview, a template is provided and

should be used. The required sections are as follows.

$# A section describing the Review Method. This should explain clearly how you setabout your review and the criteria used for selecting publications that you haveincluded in the review. If you used electronic search engines, then you should

identify which ones were used, and the search terms and parameters employed for

each one. If your material was recommended by others (such as your supervisor)

then make this clear too. Overall, the task of this section is to explain why this set of

documents are the most relevant ones for your purpose.

1# The Review. This provides the underpinning for the project and should identify andsummarise a number of key documents. These might address different aspects of the

project: some may be concerned with the technical question that the project is

addressing; others might be concerned with the choice of tools, environments etc.

5#

The Bibliography. This section should identify around 15-20+ key references,including those described in the previous section, and should be formatted using

Harvard style.


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The project report takes the form of a technical paper with a pre-defined format. This section

outlines the format, discusses the content of the major sections, and indicates how the

assessment will be performed.

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Your report should conform to the following structure. Templates for both MS Word and

LaTeX are provided. Note that you must not alter font sizes or line spacing in order to fit in

more text.

Title and preamble, identifying author and supervisor. Abstract, in the form of a Structured Abstract. Main body of the report as a series of sections that make up a narrativedescription of

the work that you have done, identifying key decisions and demonstrating rigorous

and analytical thinking about the task.

References, using Harvard format.Templates for this are available for both Word (.doc) and also LaTeX (.tex). Note that the

maximum length of the report is 20 pages. Any pages in excess of this number will not be

marked.

Note that your report should be accompanied by a declaration of originality and you should

have filed anEthics Approvalform at the start of the main project period.

The rest of this section identifies how you should organise each of the four main elements.

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As discussed previously, these should use Harvard format and should normally include no

more than three URLs (and contain no references to unrefereed or opinion sources such as

Wikipedia).

G"5 K%2)+2)The content for the abstract is derived from that of the main sections, described below.

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This section should be about 2 to 3 pages in length, and should briefly introduce the project

background, the reasons why the project is relevant and worth doing, the research question

that you are addressing, the project objectives, and deliverables, and an indication of the

outcomes. It should also introduce the terminology that is going to be used (if this is

substantial, it might be better to provide a short glossaryas an appendix.) Conventionally, the

last paragraph summarises the contents of the remaining sections to act as a road map for

the reader.

The aim of this section is to persuade a reader that this paper addresses a topic of relevance

and interest. It is therefore well worth spending time getting this one right, since you need to

ensure that the reader has a clear picture of what you have done, and why you did it.

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This section presents a survey of existing work that is related to the problem(s) that are being

addressed in your project. It should be between 2 and 4 pages in length and its objective is to

set your work into contextdescribing what others have done and what they have found.

Where your work builds upon that of others, you should ensure that you discuss their work in

this section. You should try to be balanced, dont just cherry pick papers that support the

idea that you are pursuing, if there are others that present counter-arguments, then you shouldacknowledge this.

It is particularly important that such work is referenced properly, through such conventions

as:

Use of quotationwhere material is directly reproduced from documents. Byconvention such material is placed in double quote marks, and often is also set in

italics, for example: this is a quote from a very relevant paper.

All quotations, direct or indirect (where you use your own words) must beacknowledged by referencing (using Harvard style).

This section may be derived from the work you undertook for the State of the Artreportproduced earlier. However, it will be more condensed in form (focus on key papers) and it

may include further material that you have identified while undertaking the project.

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This presents the work that you have done to address the research question. In most cases this

is where you describe the design of your software and discuss what happened when you

implemented it. You may want to use subsections to discuss such aspects as design, choice

of technology, implementation, testing etc. Overall, this should be 4 to 7 pages in length.

There are some aspects of these elements that you might want to emphasise, such as:

The high-level architecture of your solution


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Rationale and justification for your choices, including any trade-offs involved The processes involved (how did you develop the design, implementation etc.) Any deviations from the plan if you had to change your ideas about the design

during implementation, explain what changes you made, and why you did so.

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The purpose of this section is to make clear what the project achieved. The results of a

project can take many forms, depending upon the nature of the project. For example, if your

project has resulted in the development of a software tool, then you might want to summarise

the functionality of this, and provide screen-shots. For a less interactive system, you might

want to demonstrate how your system copes with a number of representative scenarios of use.

Overall this section should be 2 to 3 pages in length.

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Evaluation should address both theprocessaspects of your project (for example, why you

made particular choices and whether they proved to be good ones) as well as theproduct

itself. One of the needs of evaluation is some form of measure that allows you to demonstrate

the outcomes of the project, whether it be the usability of a software tool, or the effectiveness

of an algorithm. Both quantitative and qualitative forms of evaluation are covered quite

extensively in theResearch Methodsmodule. This section should normally be 1-2 pages in

length.

An important point here is that you get awarded marks for how well you undertook the

evaluation, not for the results of it. If your evaluation of (say) a new plug-in feature for a

browser leads to the conclusion that it was not a success, this is not too critical, what matters

is how effectively you did the evaluation and what confidence you can have in the outcomes.

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Along with the introduction, this is one of the most important sections in terms of its

influence upon the readers opinion of your work, and can be much harder to write (or to

write effectively) than you might expect. The main goals of this section are to:

summarisethe work undertaken; interpretthe outcomes in terms of the original research question(s); analysethe outcomes to identify potential extensions (with reasons for why they are

worth investigating).

(Take particular care with the last one, as this needs to be more than simply highlighting any

deliverables that you didnt have time to complete.) This section should not be more than one

page in length.


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An abstract should be less than one page, and it should summarise the complete project

report/research paper as concisely as possible. It should be between 150-300 words, and

should include the project objectives, approach and achievements.

An abstract should be treated as a separate stand-alone document that summarises another

document. Indeed, abstracts are often published separately, and are then used by researchers

and others to determine whether or not to read the complete report. So an abstract should

present all of the key information, but in a very condensed form.

Many authors (not just students) find the task of writing the abstract to be quite a difficult

task. A useful structure to use for the purpose of organising the abstract is to use a set of

fixed headings (a structured abstract) and to write one or two sentences for each heading

that describe how the project has addressed that heading. Suggested ones to use are:

Context/Background: Previous research or rationale for a study. Why the project is useful,needed,

Aims: Hypotheses to be tested or goals of the study. What the project set out to achieve. Method: Description of the type of study, treatments (including control), number and nature

of the experimental units (which may be people, teams, algorithms, programs, etc).

Experimental design, outcome being measured. How the task was tackled (e.g. by developing

a client/server solution that used or by constructing and conducting an on-line survey

of).

Results: Treatment outcome values, standard deviation and/or level of significance. Can bedata or what was achieved if building software

Conclusions: Future work, limitations of study. How well the aims were met.ES1;,9+

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Overoptimistic predictions are common in software engineering projects, e.g., the average software

project cost overrun is about 30%. This paper examines the use of two popular general tests of

optimism (the ASQ and the LOT-R test) to select software engineers that are less likely to provide

overoptimistic predictions. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition for this use is that there is a strong

relationship between optimism score, as measured by the ASQ and LOT-R tests, and predictions. We

report from two experiments on this topic. The experiments suggest that the relation between optimism

score as measured by ASQ or LOT-R and predictions is too weak to enable a use of these optimism

measurement instruments to select more realistic estimators in software organizations. Our results alsosuggest that a persons general level of optimism and over-optimistic predictions of performance are, to

a large extent, unrelated.

(The structured form of this is shown on the next page.)


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Context: Over-optimistic predictions are common in software engineering projects, as the average

software project cost overrun is about 30%. One possible means to reduce over-optimism in estimates

is to improve the selection of people less likely to have over-optimistic predictions. This selection

maybe conducted through tests of standard tests of individual optimism.

Aim: To study how well standard optimism measurement instruments (Attributional Style

Questionnaire (ASQ) and Life orientation Test-Reduced (LOT-R) tests) correlate with optimistic

predictions provided by software engineers.

Method: The first experiment involved 25 software engineering students from the University of Oslo.

Information was collected about their general level of optimism towards their studies using the ASQ

tool. They were also asked about their levels of optimism at certain times leading up to and after the

exam. The second experiment involved 14 senior project managers from a Norwegian software

development company, who were asked to estimate the most likely level of effort needed to complete a

specified software project. Optimism was measured using the LOT-R tool.

Results: The correlation between optimism and level of over-optimism was low. 15 of the students

categorized themselves as very pessimistic. The student predictions of their exam mark changed as the

exam drew nearer as they became more pessimistic. Although the project was not completed,

indications from the project manager suggest that the lowest predictions may be the most realistic.

There was however, little correlation between optimism and predicted effort level.

Conclusions: The experiments suggest that the relation between optimism score as measured by ASQ

or LOT-R and predictions is too weak to enable a use of these optimism measurement instruments to

select more realistic estimators in software organizations. Our results also suggest that a persons

general level of optimism and over-optimistic predictions of performance are, to a large extent,

unrelated.

As in the example above, structured abstracts do tend to be longer than unstructured ones,

largely because the use of headings prompts the writer to provide more detail about essential

aspects of the study which in this case was lacking in the original. However, studies of their

use in various disciplines (including our own) show that readers find them easier to read and

understand, and there seems to be some indication that they help the writer.


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The Postgraduate Project-V51

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Transcript of The Postgraduate Project-V51