A Generic Thesis Skeleton

A Generic Project Report Skeleton

1. Introduction

This is a general introduction to what the project is all about and also about the research area it is not just a description of the contents of each section. Briefly summarize the question (you will be stating the question in detail later), some of the reasons why it is a worthwhile question, and perhaps give an overview of your main results. This is a birds-eye view of the answers to the main questions answered in the project. A brief section giving background information may be necessary, especially if your work spans two or more traditional fields. That means that your readers may not have any experience with some of the material needed to follow your project, so you need to give it to them. A different title than that given above is usually better; e.g., "A Brief Review of Mutation Testing."

2. Review of the State of the Art / Literature ReviewHere you review the state of the art relevant to your project. Again, a different title is probably appropriate; e.g., "State of the Art in Mutation Testing." The idea is to present (critical analysis comes a little bit later) the major ideas in the state of the art right up to, but not including, your own personal brilliant ideas. You organize this section by idea, and not by author or by publication.

4. Research Question or Problem Statement

Engineering theses tend to refer to a "problem" to be solved where other disciplines talk in terms of a "question" to be answered. In either case, this section has three main parts:

1. A Gap Analysis between the existing work with the desired/ targeted work

2. A concise statement of the problem that your project tackles

3. Justification, by direct reference to section 3, that your question is previously unanswered

4. Discussion of why it is worthwhile to answer this question.

Item 3 above is where you analyze the information which you presented in Section 3. For example, maybe your problem is to "Developing Mutation Test Cases Using GAs " (you would further describe what you mean by "Mutation Test Cases" and "Criteria to Kill Mutants" in the problem statement). Now in your analysis of the state of the art you would show how each class of current approaches fails (i.e. can handle only small problems, or takes too much time).

Since this is one of the sections that the readers are definitely looking for, highlight it by using the word "problem" or "question" in the title: e.g. "Research Question" or "Problem Statement".

4. Describing How You Solved the Problem or Answered the QuestionThis part of the project is much more free form. It may have one or several sections and subsections. But it all has only one purpose: to convince the examiners that you answered the question or solved the problem that you set for yourself in Section 4. So show what you did that is relevant to answering the question or solving the problem. This section of project report should mainly deal with Design and Implementation of the research problem.

5. Testing & Results

This part of the project is to mainly discuss about the testing done on the implementation of your research problem and also show the result derived from it .

6. Conclusions

You generally cover three things in the Conclusions section, and each of these usually merits a separate subsection:

1. Conclusions 2. Summary of Contributions 3. Future Research

Conclusions are not a rambling summary of the project: they are short, concise statements of the inferences that you have made because of your work. It helps to organize these as short numbered paragraphs, ordered from most to least important. All conclusions should be directly related to the research question stated in Section 4. Examples:

1. The problem stated in Section 4 has been solved: as shown in Sections? to ??, an algorithm capable of handling Test Case Generation problem in reasonable time has been developed.

2. The principal mechanism needed to improve the Mutation Testing using GAs.

3. Etc.

The Summary of Contributions will be much sought and carefully read by the examiners. Here you list the contributions of new knowledge that your project makes. Of course, the project itself must substantiate any claims made here. There is often some overlap with the Conclusions, but that's okay. Concise numbered paragraphs are again best. Organize from most to least important. Examples:

1. Developed a much quicker algorithm.

2. Demonstrated the first use.

3. Etc.

The Future Research subsection is included so that researchers picking up this work in future have the benefit of the ideas that you generated while you were working on the project. Again, concise numbered paragraphs are usually best.

References

The list of references is closely tied to the review of the state of the art given in section 3. Most examiners scan your list of references looking for the important works in the field, so make sure they are listed and referred to in section 3. All references given must be referred to in the main body of the project. Note the difference from a Bibliography, which may include works that are not directly referenced in the project. Organize the list of references either alphabetically by author surname (preferred), or by order of citation in the project.

Appendices

What goes in the appendices? Any material which impedes the smooth development of your presentation, but which is important to justify the results of a project. Generally it is material that is of too nitty-gritty a level of detail for inclusion in the main body of the project, but which should be available for perusal by the examiners to convince them sufficiently. Examples include immense tables of data, lengthy mathematical proofs or derivations, etc.

Reference:

1. http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/Instructions-thesis.html (Chapter Structure)2. http://www.rpi.edu/dept/grad/docs/ThesisGuide/manual.html (Documents required)

3. http://www.cs.fit.edu/wds/guides/howto/ (An Outline For Each Chapter)4. http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/chinneck/thesis.html (How to Organize your Thesis)

Few Example to how to write references

1. S. Grinstein, J.Huth, J.Schopf. Resource Predictors in HEP Applications. Computing in High Energy Physics,Interlaken, Switzerland, Sep. 2004. pp. 69.2. R. Braun, H. Siegel, N. Beck, L. Boloni, M. Maheswaran, A. Reuther, J. Robertson, M. Theys, B. Yao, D. Hensgen and R. Freund, A Comparison of Eleven Static Heuristics for Mapping a Class of Independent Tasks onto Heterogeneous DistributedComputing Systems, in J. of Parallel and Distributed Computing, vol.61, No. 6, pp.810-837, 2001.3. Project Formatting Guidelines

1. Type Style and Spacing: Same type style and font should be used throughout the project and should be justified. All printing should be single side. As per following specifications:

Font Times New Roman

Chapter Title 16 Bold

Heading 14 Bold (1.1, 1.2 etc), Subheading 12 Bold (1.1.1, 1.2.2 etc)

Body Font Size 12

Line Spacing 1.5 lines

Margins Top, Bottom & Right 1 Inch each and Left 1.5 Inch (Including Binding)

Page Size Standard A4

2. Parts of project:

a. Title on hard cover

b. Same Title on 1st page

c. Certificate

d. Acknowledgement

e. Abstract

f. Table of Contents

g. List of Figures (If Any)

h. List of Tables (If Any)

Note: From certificate till list of tables all page numbers should be in romans (i, ii. etc). Page number 1 should start from Chapter 1.

Note: For the project report being submitted during April-May 2015, color of the cover is Black TITLE OF THE PROJECTProject Worksubmitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of degree of

Bachelor of Technologyin

Computer Science & EngineeringSubmitted ByName of the Candidate

(Enroll. No.)Under the supervision ofName of the Supervisor

Designation

School of Computing Science and EngineeringGalgotias universityGreater noida 201306

may 2015Certificate

I hereby certify that the work which is being presented in the project entitled, Software Engineering, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of degree of Bachelor in Technology in Computer Science and Engineering submitted in School of Computing Science and Engineering of Galgotias University, Gr. Noida, is an authentic record of my own work carried out under the supervision of Name of supervisor and refers other researchers works which are duly listed in the reference section.

The matter presented in this project has not been submitted for the award of any other degree of this or any other university.

(Name of Candidate)

This is to certify that the above statement made by the candidate is correct and true to the best of my knowledge.

(Name of Supervisor)

School of Computing Science and Engineering

Galgotias University

Gr. NoidaCountersigned by

(Dr. Parma Nand)

(Sibaram Khara)Professor & Dean

Dean (Academics)School of Computing Science & Engineering

Galgotias UniversityGalgotias University

Gr. Noida

Gr. NoidaBlack