IN3007/INM450 11/17/2021
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IN3007 and INM450
Session 2: Writing Your PDD
Planning, Risk Identification and Ethics
Chris Child, Cristina Gacek, Chris
Smart, Andy MacFarlane and Lorenzo
Strigini
Objectives
■Advice and guidelines on writing your PDD
■Identifying Objectives
■Planning
■Risk Analysis
■Ethics
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Outline
■Choosing a project (recap)
■Project milestones
■Writing your Project Definition Document
■Define the Problem to be Solved
■Defining Objectives and Research Questions
■Background Reading and Literature Review
■Plan and Manage Your Project
■Risks
■Professional conduct and research ethics
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First Step: Choose a Project (Recap)
■Projects must solve a real problem (a game satisfies this)
■Must have a Design and Build component
■May address a business or research problem
■Challenging but feasible
■Think about the skills you want to acquire (your dream job)
■Deliver something of value
■Avoid: literature reviews, surveys, vague objectives
■Make sure you identify beneficiaries
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Next Steps: Main Project Milestones
■Project Definition Document
■Meetings with your consultant and project team sessions
■Doing the project work
■Final Project Submission
■Include final project review video submission
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This is Your Project
■You are responsible for doing the work
■You are responsible for managing your project
■Not just following the rules and submitting by the deadlines...
■But plan, execute, change when necessary...
■You need to take the initiative
■Your consultant provides guidance
■ you can also ask the project team during project sessions
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Project Definition Document (PDD)
■A plan for the remainder of your project
■follow the rules in the project handbook
■Submit draft PDD via Moodle for consultant review (end T2 W1)
■Meet with consultant to discuss PDD (T2 W2)
■Submit final PDD via Moodle (end T2 W2)
■Approved by your consultant (pass/fail)
■if pass then continue
■if fail then make the requested changes, show to the consultant
again and submit again.
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PDD Rules
■No ethics checklist
 resubmit
■No client information sheet for a client-based project
 resubmit
■Late submission
■ delays may cause project to fail
■Proposal word limit (excluding references, tables, diagrams):
■BSc 1500 words, MSci 2500 words
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Define the Problem to be Solved
■Concise statement of problem to be solved
■E.g.: need software system to fulfil a purpose; complex/difficult
design; implementation problem; unexplored opportunity;
■For an academic client project, the problem might be a research
problem, identified by your client
■Projects are based on existing knowledge
■This section should include references to existing relevant work
■You are required to cite at least one such item
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Diablo II [1] is an action role-playing game that was released in 2000 and arguably had very
few worthy successors released over these 16 years. The aim of this project is to try to
recreate the feel of progression from Diablo II while utilizing fully automated level generation
using cellular automata [2] projected into 3D and the Unity game engine to ensure high
replayablity of the game.
Problem to be solved:
Diablo II screenshot [3] Dungeon generation using Cellular Automata [4]
Example from Mate Tam PDD (2017)
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Reading (for project and PDD)
■Reading about what others have done is essential
■Helps you understand the background and previous work for
your project
■why this problem is worth solving (and what are the difficulties)
■how your work differs from other work
■what techniques/methods/building-blocks you can use
■Needed for project choice, PDD and final project report
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Why Do You Need To Read?
■A project is about problem solving:
■you need fully to understand the problem
■you need to know existing possible solutions: do not re-invent
the wheel
■you need examples of how to go about solving the problem
■you will learn from examples of how to report your work
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What Should You Read About?
■ The problem to solve
■ What is known about it and ways of solving it
■ Previous experience and research results (applicable to your
research, your client’s problem, your software development
application)
■ Existing products for which your new product will be a
competitor or a complement
■ Methods, “technologies” and techniques to use
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What Should You Read About?
■Design and Build projects: read about other methods and
products like the ones you are planning
■can you learn good tricks or find defects that you should avoid?
■Academic research projects: read about other research
studies that address similar research questions
■All projects: read about appropriate methods
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Different Sources Have Different Credibility
■Peer reviewed research publications (journal, conference)
■Reference books, textbooks, lecture notes and tutorials
■Technical reports
■Theses
■Company white papers
■Online articles (practitioners, professional organisations)
■even these may be useful, but do not take opinions as truth
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Some Useful Pointers
■Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.co.uk
■University library: http://www.city.ac.uk/library
■ACM Digital Library http://0-portal.acm.org.wam.city.ac.uk/
■IEEE/IET Digital Library (IEEE Xplore)
http://0-www.ieee.org.wam.city.ac.uk/ieeexplore/
■Publications by City researchers:
http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/
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Finding a starting point
■Find products like the one you plan
■Wikipedia, user bulletin boards, or an online summary
■summary of new ideas in a professional magazine
■Research problem and appropriate research methods:
■An article from Google Scholar
■Articles by City research staff
■Important: do not stop at the starting point
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Defining Objectives and Research Questions
■Objectives are what you aim to achieve through the project.
■There should be a single main objective
■This will then be broken down into sub-objectives..
■Objectives should define a task. E.g. “This project shall ...”
■Objectives should be numbered and testable
■identify simple tests that you will apply during the project
■Academic client projects may also require research
questions and/or hypotheses
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Iterative (e.g. 3 build) project approach
■Split your project into three builds and create numbered
objectives for each
■1. Minimum Viable Product: simplest version of your project
■If you complete this and write it up, you could pass (40/50%)
■2. The Main Product: functional but with no extra features
■Complete and written up would be around 60% project
■3. Additional Features: take this to the next level
■A set of tasks that take this up to 70-80%
■Aim for 5-10% standalone tasks you can add 1-by-1 as time permits.
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Plan and Manage Your Project
■Create a work plan
■Take each of your numbered objectives and schedule them
■Add additional tasks such as literature review and report write-
up
■Divide activities into outputs with start/end-dates
■Consider whether the work plan is feasible
■Include a simple diagram of the work plan with a time axis
(e.g. a Gantt chart)
■Include a column for days needed for each task
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Risk analysis
■We ask you to consider risks
1) to your project: causing you to fail some of your
numbered objectives, get lower marks or fail;
2) that your project may cause: causing others to suffer
harm (financial, physical, psychological, etc.)
■What do you need to do?
■Identify: possible risks (bad things that might happen)
■Consider: how bad, how likely
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Identifying risks your project may cause
■What does your project involve that might cause harm; what
would be the worst-case consequences? E.g.:
■you build a robot: could it hurt someone or damage something?
■you build an app that gives advice: how bad would wrong advice be?
■your software will collect information: if that were deleted, or stolen, or
corrupted... how bad could the effect be?
■your web-based application may create vulnerabilities affecting other
activities/software
■If all possible consequence are light, no serious risk
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Identifying project risks
■Review each item in your work plan and identify risks. E.g.
■"week 2: obtain requirements from the client"
■Risk: what if they are late? Or wrong?
■Consequences: large delays or changes to your software
(possibly resulting in an unfinished project)
■Can you reduce the probability of this happening?
■If it happens, can you mitigate the consequences?
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Planning for risks
■We can:
■prevent (make less likely) the events with bad consequences
■build mitigation mechanisms or contingency plans/actions to
mitigate the effects
■which usually involves some methods for monitoring to detect
the development of risks
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Example risk chart with scoring
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Example from Mate Tam PDD (2017)
Ethics and professional conduct in your project
■Professional ethics
■in choosing, planning and running your project
■in your PDD: project choice and analysis of risk to others
■Professional conduct in reporting
■proper use of other people's work, truthful reporting
■Research ethics
■protecting the well-being and privacy of people you involve in
your project ("participants")
■in your PDD: ethics checklist
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Professional ethics
■as IT professionals, we have power to do good and harm:
we must obey rules
■IT professional societies have codes of conduct
■https://www.bcs.org/membership/become-a-member/bcs-code-of-conduct/
■https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics
■the essential points for a student project:
■avoid harm to others; consider risks from what you do not know
■serve the users of your product, obey the rules of your clients
■obey the law and have due regard for the good of society
■be professional in using other people's work and in reporting 27
"Show what you know, learn what you don't"
■the BCS code says that as professionals you must
■only undertake work that is within your professional
competence;
■NOT claim any level of competence that you do not possess...
■develop your professional knowledge, skills and competence...
■ensure that you have the knowledge and understanding of
legislation and that you comply with such legislation ...
■what then must you do as students?
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"Show what you know, learn what you don't" - 2
■as students you must
■be aware of the limits of your knowledge and experience
■university teaches a lot but much less than a mature IT team knows
■your project is usually the first time you attempt something this big
■study any knowledge/skills you need for your project
■to build well, and understand and contain any risk to users
■but still warn users/clients against fully relying on your product
■if its unexpected errors may cause harm – financial, health, or other
■consider your duty of care
■e.g. a client company that is a mature software developer will know
how to review and safely use your product
■but a client with user-only knowledge of IT needs warning by you
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Professional Conduct in reporting and reusing
Every year, students are penalised for poor practice and
academic misconduct
■ some people cheat and are taken to the academic misconduct
panel
■ others are careless and lose marks through not paying attention
to the rules
■don’t be one of them!
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Poor Practice
■Poor practice in project work includes:
■Consistent failure to cite the work of others
■Consistent inaccuracies when citing the work of others
■Failure to report all work undertaken, e.g. how much code you
developed and how much you reused
The most frequent form of poor practice: poor citations.
■ always give credit for ideas, advice, knowledge etc from
others (typically: in-text citation plus reference)
■ if you reproduce text, show that it is so (quotation marks)
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Academic Misconduct
■Any form of abuse of academic conventions or regulations
by an individual or group, with the intention of gaining
advantage over others.
■Academic misconduct might occur through plagiarism, collusion,
cheating, intentional disruption, or through other means
■All kinds of lying, including white lies, stealing, borrowing without
permission or without acknowledgment...
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Academic Misconduct
■Academic misconduct includes:
■ Suggesting that the work of others is your own work
■ Making up your results, or copying them from elsewhere
■ Failing to provide sufficient evidence that you did the work
■Worst case outcome: expulsion without a degree
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Appropriate Conduct
■Demonstrate this through:
■ regular contact with your consultant/supervisor
■ keeping the documentation of all steps, e.g. record of supervision
meetings, audio recordings of interviews, signed consent forms, etc.
■ showing these in the final project review
■ submitting a good report and outputs
■ following all the rules
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Research Ethics
■All students must complete the ethics checklist
■ this indicates whether your project will require ethical approval
■ if you answer “yes” to any question in Part A, you will need some form
of ethical approval
■ i.e. if your project involves people (“human participants”), or their
identifiable data, you will need ethical approval
■ this applies to most projects
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Ethical Approval from Consultants/Supervisors
■In most cases, your consultant/supervisor can give ethical
approval
■This means that you must tell your consultant/supervisor
about what you are planning to do before you do it
■You cannot proceed until you get approval
■Consultants/supervisors will not approve unethical work;
your PDD will not be approved until you get it right
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Approval From Your Consultant/Supervisor
■If you need ethical approval from your consultant/supervisor,
you must submit information about what you are planning
■Typically:
■study plan
■participant information sheet and consent form
■interview and survey questions
■usually not ready when you write your PDD
■get approval once you write them and before using them
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1. Overall Considerations: Risks and Benefits
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■Is your activity well-planned?
■Will the activity help you to meet your objectives and/or answer
your research questions? If not, the ethical issue is that this will
be a waste of participants' time and/or the results may be
misleading.
■What are the risks and benefits?
■Have risks to participants been minimised? Are risks
proportionate to the benefits?
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2. Recruitment of Participants
■How will participants be recruited?
■E.g. You should not spam email lists or social media
■Is there any pressure to participate? There shouldn't be.
■How will participation impact on participants?
■Are they being asked to do something reasonable? Will
something useful come from their participation? Will they be
exposed to physical or psychological risks?
■Are vulnerable people involved (e.g. children or people with a
disability)? If so, other ethical approval is required.
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3. Informed Consent
■Will participants be provided with a "Participant Information
Sheet" and asked to sign a consent form?
■The only exception is when a questionnaire is used to collect
data (participant's consent is implicit in completion).
■Are the Participant Information Sheets and consent forms
clear and understandable to the intended participants?
■Does the Participant Information Sheet explain to participants
the purpose of the project?
■what they will be asked to do and what data will be collected?
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Informed Consent Process
■Will potential participants have adequate time to consider
the information and to ask questions?
■Does the consent form make it clear what the participant is
consenting to do and what data will be collected?
■If the applicant is using an existing data set that includes
identifiable personal data, did the people consent for it to be
used in this way?
■Will participants know who to contact if things go wrong?
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4. Care and Protection of Participants
■Will participants be told that they can withdraw without
penalty? They should be.
■Will participants' names, images or other identifiable data be
included in publications?
■This should only happen with the explicit consent of the
participants
■Will participants be asked to disclose sensitive information?
■If so, this requires other ethical approval
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5. Risks to You
■Are you likely to expose yourself to risk?
■E.g. by conducting data collection etc. somewhere other than
the University? Or by accessing illegal or politically sensitive
information? Or by collecting data about such subjects?
■Are you likely to expose the University to risk?
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Next Steps
■Read the Project Handbook
■Define a project idea, start background reading.
■Start to write your PDD when time permits.
■Consultants/Supervisors will be allocated to you and will
review your PDD for approval (term 2 week 2).
■Start your project work.
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City, University of London
Northampton Square
London
EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom
T: +44 (0)20 7040 8406
E: [email protected]
www.city.ac.uk/department-computer-science
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