Formatting Your Deliverables

Start getting used to the fact that everything you produce in the real world can end up in your manager's hands, the company president's hands, and even the customer's hands. And if you are particularly unlucky, it will end up in the jury's hands. Document your work professionally and truthfully, and proofread it before releasing it.

General Information

Make sure that each of your deliverables has the following:

Your Team Number
Your Team Name and/or Project Name
Your Team Members' Names
Date
Assignment number and name

For example:

Team 5
Wearable ECG Detection of Alcoholism
Ravi Chandran
Li Mei Cheng
Josie O'Neal
Contract Book #5 Project Plan
November 2, 2007

Templates

If an engineering document template has been provided for your use, use the template. The template will contain instructions on how to use it, and what information to include. The title page contains a reverse-chronological revision table - add a new row entry at the top for each revision you release. Generally, you will have at least two entries - the first draft entry that you submit as homework, and the final version for your contract book submission. If I ask you to resubmit a version, that will become another entry. Items contained in <brackets> means that you are to replace that with your specific information. Also remove the bracket symbols. Realize that templates give you a basic idea of format and content. Sometimes certain sections are not appropriate for your project. You may need to add and remove sections as needed. When in doubt, ask.

Look and Feel

Turn version tracking OFF and accept all changes before you print/submit a document. It is unprofessional to release a document that still has change bars and old text in it, especially when the old text is for a project that is not your own! (Yes, this has happened.) Include a copyright notice on your work. Spellcheckers - learn to use your spellchecker EFFECTIVELY! Don't just randomly accept all the spellchecker's suggestions. Many many engineering and medical terms are not in the dictionary. True story - one student group accidentally allowed the spellchecker to replace one critical word throughout their final semester report. Instead of measuring a thickness with a "micrometer" they proposed using a "multimeter." That single change made their testing incomprehensible and affected their grade. Ouch. Proofread!!! Re-read your entire document AFTER you spell check it.

Coding Standards

All code submitted must adhere to the coding standards. Functional code that does not meet these standards will be marked down.

Header block with name(s), course, assignment number and description, date.
All hardware ports and registers accessed using descriptive names.
#defines used instead of hard-coded numbers throughout code.
Error checking and debuggable elements present.
Header block for all functions with name, function, inputs, outputs/returns.
Comments as appropriate.
Descriptive variable and function names.
Any unusual behavior suspicious code clearly documented.

See "Recommended C Style and Coding Standards" from Bell Labs Indian Hill guide. (http://www.chris-lott.org/resources/cstyle/indhill-cstyle.html)