This post shares some resources that might be useful during the course of your project module. Some of what is presented here may be already familiar to you, having studied earlier modules.
What you will need will, of course, vary depending on your project. You will need to make choices about what you need. In your project report, you also need to say something about why you have chosen what you have chosen. Also, do remember, that what you find might be even more helpful than what is given here.
Diversity, Equality and Inclusion
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 is an important piece of legislation, which defines a number of protected characteristics.
When it comes to computing projects, the W3C WAI WCAG is an important resource, especially if your software product makes use of web technologies.
Ethics
Software systems affect people and society. Requirements for software systems can come from people and society. Wherever there is people, there is also ethics. Computing professionals must behave in a way that is ethical. To help with the Legal, Social, Ethical and Professional Issues, the following sets of guidelines are considered to be helpful:
- BCS Code of Conduct
- ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
- Joint ACM/IEEE Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice
Gantt chart tools
As suggested in earlier posts, it is a good idea to create a Gantt chart for your project to create an overview of what you expect will happen and when
It is completely up to you how you create your Gantt chart. You might choose to create one using many of the different spreadsheet templates that are available. Alternatively, you could download a software package, such as Project Libre Desktop which is an alternative to the popular Microsoft Project package.
Another approach would be to use one of the many cloud-based Gantt tools that are available, such as GanttPro. These cloud-based products often offer a trial period, after which you have to pay a monthly fee.
Every tool has its own advantages and disadvantages and will have learning curve if you haven’t used one of these tools before.
Generative AI
GenAI can be considered to be a useful resource, but it must be used with caution. Every student has access to a Microsoft product called CoPilot. If AI is used in the creation of code that is used within a software solution, you must document what prompts have been submitted to which language model. If you use AI as a part of a solution to a wider problem, it is important and necessary to discuss the implications of its use, in terms of risks, ethics and bias.
University level guidance is available through this resource: Generative AI in learning, teaching and assessment at the OU. This provides a link to guidance for students. Guidelines for referencing the use of GenAI can be found, in part, on the CiteThemRight website.
Literature review
The literature review is, as suggested earlier, a summary of all your reading that has contributed to the development and completion of your project. Whatever you mention in your literature review rection should be used or applied in some way.
In addition to some of the skills resources that follow, the following resources may be useful:
An introduction to software development Open Learn Badged Open Course (BOC), which contains a very useful section, Finding and reading academic articles.
Srinivasan Keshav’s article entitled How to read a paper offers some practical guidance about how to read and analyse an academic article.
Project management resources
All the guidance you need to complete your project is presented within the module materials (and within this accompanying guide). There are, of course, other resources in the world that can offer some complementary guidance.
One such resource is the Project Management for IT-Related Projects: 3rd edition, published by the British Computer Society (BCS). You don’t need to buy this text, but you may be able to access parts of it through the OU Library.
Although this text is intended for industry professionals, it may be useful for your project. The guidance about project models reflects some of the advice shared in module materials.
Prototyping tools
There are different approaches to prototyping. One of the simplest and most useful tools is, of course, pencil and paper. It is acceptable to draw prototypes of your software product and share these within your project report. An earlier article, TM470 Considering prototyping offers a bit more guidance about the concept of prototyping.
If you wish to use a tool to help you with your prototyping, the following might be useful:
If you wish to go beyond creating prototypes of user interfaces, you could use other tools to create prototype designs of your software system. One such tool is Visual Paradigm which can be useful with drawing of UML diagrams, and diagrams that describe cloud computing infrastructure. Other cloud-based drawing tools could, of course, be used.
Products such as Balsamiq and Visual Paradigm can be used with an academic licence.
Further academic guidance about prototyping can be found in the following text book:
Sharp, H., Rogers, Y. and Preece, J. (2023) Interaction design : beyond human-computer interaction. 6th edition. Milton: Wiley.
Which is available through the OU Library.
Risk assessment and management
Accompanying the description of the lifecycle model are two useful sections: risk assessment and risk management. Risk assessment concerns with considering what the risks to your project might be. Risk management concerns with approaches to deal with those risks. The risk assessment approach presented in the module is relatively simple. It considers risks in terms of impact and likelihood, which is sufficient for the needs of your project report.
Every project is, however, different in the ways that it need to take account of risk. Some wider issues that might be helpful includes the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. There is also ISO 27001, an international standards which concerns information security. Risks can be managed not just in terms of how technology is used, but also how human processes are applied.
Skills, writing and studying
The following links offer some useful practical guidance about writing and studying:
Within the library pages, the following two pages are particularly helpful:
Do also refer to sections in this guide that refer to the writing of your project report and the appropriate uses of Generative AI.
Software development tools
Your choice of tools will depend, in part, on the characteristics of your project, and what skills you wish to develop. An important tool is the integrated development environment (IDE), which often integrates together a text editor, a debugger, and a way to run your software. IDEs can also be connected with version control software (to keep your software safe) and AI assistants, which help you with your learning. Historically, IDEs used to focus on a single programming language, such as Java or Python. Popular IDEs now work with multiple programming languages.
What follows is a useful summary of some popular IDEs:
Apache Netbeans. Netbeans primarily supports the Java programming language but can be used with other languages through extensions.
Eclipse. Eclipse is an enterprise level ‘cloud native’ IDE that supports a wide variety of languages.
IntelliJ. IntelliJ is a popular commercial IDE that was notable for its usability and functionality. A ‘dev toolkit’ pack is available for students.
Microsoft Visual Studio Code. Visual Studio Code is notably the most popular IDE. It can be used with multiple languages. VS Code is not to be confused with Microsoft Visual Studio, which is a different similarly named product.
PyCharm. PyCharm is a Python IDE from JetBrains who also have created IntelliJ. An alternative tool for Python developers is the Jupyter Notebook environment.
Software testing
A thorough project will move through an entire cycle of gathering requirements, implementing those requirements, through to carrying out of testing to make sure that requirements have been implemented correctly.
There are a number of tools that can help with the software testing (which is not to be confused with usability testing).
In terms of source code, there is a unit testing framework which is known as xJunit, where the ‘x’ refer to the initial of a programming language. The xUnit.net site relates to a unit testing framework that can be used with a number of different Microsoft .NET languages. JUnit.org if specifically concerned with unit testing of Java code. There is also PyUnit which concerns the testing of Python code.
Unit testing is testing that operates at a low level. Moving up a level, there are other tools, such as Cucumber. There are other tools out there, such as Selenium, but this takes us beyond the boundaries of a project, and towards testing at an industrial level.
An important point to remember is that the extent of testing that is necessary depends on what the impact of errors might be. Testing is guided by risk.
Version management
It is important to keep the software you create safe. The best way to do this is to use a version management system. The dominant tool used for version management is called Git. Git allows you to save your software into a safe repository called GitHub. The following introductory videos offer some useful explanations:
To begin to use Git, you must install the Git software on your local computer. If you are using Windows, you will install something called a ‘terminal’, MinTTY, which allows you to execute Git commands and upload your code to GitHub. There is also a graphical user interface version, but in terms of gaining practical experience, it is best to use the terminal (unless, of course, you manage to use Git as a part of your IDE).
By way of further information, the following resource is helpful: Ponuthorai, P.K. and Loeliger, J. (2022) Version Control with Git. 3rd edition. O’Reilly Media. Appendix A, History of Git, offers a lot of useful background information, which is worth a read.
Reflections
It is hoped this blog post offers some useful resources to complement what is shared within the module materials. Since your project is intended to be an individual project, I have not covered tools that support collaboration in an agile environment, such as Jira. Similarly, I have not shared resources that concerns covered cloud computing, since there is no need to consider deployment beyond your own personal computer, unless you decided this is an important element of your project.
A key point is that you must choose resources that you feel you need to use and apply within your project. You also should find the time to write about what these are. You should also say something about the skills you need to acquire to use or apply these resources.
A final note: none of the software products mentioned here are official university recommendations; these are personal opinions (which may, or may not, be useful).