CS 509 Project Journal

It was decided in class on 3/23/06 that the project journal should be turned in by students a couple of times throughout the course of the term, rather than just waiting until the end of the term, to make sure expectations are being met correctly. Therefore, each student will turn in a project journal on class #3 (4/6/06) and on class #7 (5/4/06) in addition to the last day of class (5/25/06).

Throughout this semester you are expected to keep a journal of your project work. You may keep this in a computer file if you like, or you may buy a notebook for this purpose and write entries manually. In either case, you are required to turn in your journal at the end of the term. In this file or notebook you should keep track of all of the time you spend on the term project, including group meetings and individual efforts:

• For group meetings, select one member of the group to record the progress. This may be one person who has this responsibility for the whole term, or you may decide to change whose responsibility this is for each meeting. In any case, at least one group member will record for each meeting the date and time of the meeting, how long the meeting was intended to take, how long it actually took, and any other notes you wish to include.
• For your individual effort, each time you begin a task related to the term project, mark down in your journal the date, the task you are attempting to accomplish, and an estimate of the amount of time you intend to spend at that task. At the end of that effort, mark down how long you actually spent working on that task, and any other notes you wish to include.

The purpose of the journal is not to judge you based on the length of time you spend on the project or how accurate your estimates are, so do not exaggerate or understate the data - just be honest. The real purpose of the project journal is to give you experience estimating and tracking the amount of time it takes to accomplish various tasks. The ability to make accurate time estimates is an important skill and takes practice to learn.

Download Sample Journal (Microsoft Excel document).
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