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Creating a Proposal and Plan for your Senior Design.
As you begin your project, you'll approach it as you would in the
work world. In some cases you will need make a proposal to your
customer and show them that you have a plan of action. This might also
be called your "approach". As you show your ability to look ahead and
organize yourselves as a team, you can establish trust with your
customer. This station is dedicated to helping you develop that
proposal and plan.
What you'll find at this station.
- A problem solving approach and that outlines your proposal and
leads to a plan of action..
- An example of a proposal and plan, so you can see what one looks
like.
- A lead into the next station on this line: Negotiation.
Lets Take this one step at a time ...
When you first recieve your problem statement from the customer ,
you will probably find that some parts of the requirements are fuzzy or
need to be defined so that both you and the customer have the same goal
in mind. Your first task is to redefine the problem statement so that
it is clear to the team and your interpretation agrees with the
customer's needs. the better you listen to the customer the more you
will prevent problems from popping up later that will be harder to fix.
This doesn't mean that the requirements will change. The purpose is to
clarify the requirements, not redefine them.
Your next step as a team is to set down an approach to solving the
problem. The following exercise can be used to achieve this. It starts
at the end and steps backward until you reach the beginning.
- First:
- Make a statement about the completed product. This may be a
statement of what it is or what it will do. State who your customer
is, who will use the product and how you will know if they are satisfied
with the outcome. For example, will they tell you directly, will
someone be testing the product ...? Include in this statement, an
estimated completion date. This statement may conveniently be used in
your documentation of the product.
- Next:
- Think of the very last thing that must happen in order for your
goal of completion to be achieved. What MUST happen in order
for your project to be declared finished?
- Then:
- Taking one step at a time backward, state what must happen in order
to get to that last step that you just defined. As you write (or
possably diagram) all of these steps you will find yourselves defining
jobs. Many different tasks may need to be completed and these can be
assigned to individual members of the team. As you step backward from
the completed project, you will eventually find yourselves at the
beginning and you'll know where to start. Now, you have an outline of
your approach. If there are any time or financial constraints on any of
the steps, include them in the picture. If your team sees techinical
conflicts at this early stage, now is the time to discuss them with your
faculty advisor and the customer.
- Finally:
- You can now make a statment to your customer. You can restate the
problem, say what you imagine the final product will be like and show
your customer all of the steps that you believe will lead to the
successful completion of the project. With help from your advisor
this information can be moved into the proposal that you will present to
your customer.
Example of Proposal:
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