9.1. Project Styles¶
You have undertaken an engineering project, a research project or, possibly, a mixture of engineering and research:
For the purposes of this document, an engineering project is one where you will have taken a problem, identified requirements and proceeded with the design, implementation and testing. It might use a classic plan-driven approach or an agile approach. An engineering project would typically focus on software, but some projects may have an element of hardware.
A research project is one where there is one, or more, research questions (hypotheses) and you have developed experiments and produced results to evaluate those questions.
Both styles of project are discussed in this document. If your project is a mixture of engineering and research, please speak to your supervisor about the best way to present your work in the project report. It won’t change the nature of the work you are doing, but it might affect how you structure your report.
Research projects are generally based on topics suggested by a supervisor. The supervisor will provide guidance on an appropriate way to approach such topics, including how you will structure your experiments and discuss the results.
