2. What’s good
• Probably the only chance you’ll ever get to
completely manage an IT project from start to
finish.
• No staff, suppliers, budgets to worry about
• Documentation requirement is thorough, but
quite achievable.
• You can do anything you like*
* as long as it’s complex…..
3. It should be fun, but usually it’s not
• Reasons:
– Project isn’t real (no expectation it will get used)
– Paperwork element isn’t really understood
– Specification ‘creep’
– Time management
• Non-Reasons:
– Technical problems
4. Choosing the right project
• Complexity considerations:
– Non-trivial algorithms, eg: sorting and recursive algorithms.
– Use of sophisticated features of programming language, e.g.
sophisticated data structures, user-defined OOP classes
– Complexity of non-computing field of the problem, e.g. complex
mathematics or complicated data relationships
• And also available
– Time-based simulation
– Portable devices / games consoles
– Communication Protocols, e.g. TCP connections
– Image Processing / pattern recognition, e.g. steganography, use of
regular expressions
5. Choosing the right project
• Real end-user
• Real problem that interests you
• Able to include complex elements
• …. that’s it.
