Spring 2014 Capstone Assignment 2

Due Friday January 31st by 5 PM

= Purpose =
 * plan and outline generation
 * defining the general outline of your work in a technical writing framework
 * create a detailed Gantt chart that describes your progress through the semester
 * lay out a concrete path towards a prototype

= Assignment =
 * 1) Read the following on technical writing
 * 2) http://web.mit.edu/me-ugoffice/communication/technical-writing.pdf
 * 3) http://grammar.about.com/od/tz/g/technicalwritingterm.htm
 * 4) Read the following on agile development
 * 5) http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/604417/Agile-software-development-methodologies-and-how-t
 * 6) Transform your assignment 1 into an outline of your technical report that you will fill in during the course of the semester. It will constantly evolve. Specifically:
 * 7) Make a copy of your assignment 1 in Drive, and call it assignment 2 (or something similar). Do not modify the original.
 * 8) Create an outline of a technical report using what you've read from above to guide you. It should have at least the following sections:
 * 9) Introduction
 * 10) This is obvious I hope...
 * 11) Related Work
 * 12) This is obvious I hope...
 * 13) Methods
 * 14) Use this to describe how you are going to manage your time and development in this course. You must include a Gantt chart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gantt_chart.
 * 15) Make sure your chart is divided into reasonable tasks. One in particular to consider is working on a partial prototype. Think about what parts of the system/piece can be created first and which can be simulated, such that you have a working project quickly.
 * 16) You should also write up what you know about your methods. Sketch out your algorithms, include pseudo code, try to make it as concrete as possible.
 * 17) Results
 * 18) Here you can report on your results to date
 * 19) But you should also clearly write-up your desired results. Paint me a picture with your words
 * 20) Discussion
 * 21) You will probably not have much to discuss at this point.
 * 22) References
 * 23) Some of the above sections you won't be able to fully write yet (of course). But you should be able to create a rough draft of most sections and insert place holders for pieces that you can't write at the moment.
 * 24) Page length? There isn't a set number of pages, but anything less than several pages at this moment will probably not be sufficient.

CITA 295: This technical report will take the form of a technical proposal that you will use as the foundation for the CITA 495 project. So when you write up methods, you are trying to propose the methods that you using. We want you to have a very solid proposal for your 495 project when the time comes. Your results and discussion will be preliminary results and discussion.

495 Students: It is very critical that you manage your time appropriately this semester. To do this you must spend a significant amount of time up front coming up with goals and milestones. You must put together a realistic and achievable schedule for yourself to be successful in this course.

= Submission = Submit the above assignment to your Google Drive folder. At the top, make sure you include:
 * 1) Your name, course, assignment no., date
 * 2) Name of your project