CS 5382 - Topics in Software Development

		     PROJECT PROPOSAL GUIDELINES
                 (File $Date: 2010/03/11 18:50:26 $)

Your proposal should be 2-3 pages long. If possible, use either ACM or
IEEE format; they are available from the course website.

The general purpose of any proposal is to persuade the readers to do
something --- in this case you want the instructor to approve your
project and also attract others to your project.  In general, every
proposal should answer questions about "what" you are proposing, "how"
you plan to do it, "when" you plan to do it, and "how much" it is
going to cost (not applicable in this case). Your proposal should
address at least the following.

1. Problem. You may want to break your problem into two parts: a broad
   problem and a specific problem. The broad problem specifies the
   context of your project and thus helps to understand the importance
   of the problem that you are going to solve. The specific is the
   particular niche that your project addresses. 

3. Goal. This is what you do in your project to address the specific
   problem and how you will be evaluated. If you claim in your
   proposal that your goal is to move the Franklin Mountains, I will
   expect you to do it. So, be very careful in articulating your goal
   statement.

4. Approach. You should state how you will do what you have claimed to
   do in your goal statement. For this proposal, you approach doesn't
   have to be that much detailed, but at least you should specify the
   general approach that you are going to use to solve the problem.

5. Related Work. You are expected to do a reasonable (literature)
   survey to find out whether there are any approaches that are
   related to your project proposal; the problem might have been
   already solved by others! Your proposal should cite scholarly
   publications where appropriate.

6. Plan for Evaluation. How do you know that you solved the original
   problem? You should state your plan for analyzing and evaluating
   that what you have done will indeed help fulfill the stated goal. 

7. Schedule and Deliverables. Every project is expected to perform
   some actions and to deliver something at the end. You should
   identify major tasks or activities that you will perform during the
   project and also state the deliverables.  The project deliverables
   may vary widely depending on the characteristics of the projects,
   but common deliverables include source code, documents (e.g.,
   design documents and API specifications), and the final report.