For under graduate programs each and every student during their final year needs to do a project work. The final year project is the final phase of the degree program – it gives students a chance to demonstrate all they have learned until final year. To evaluate their project students submit final reports of their progress and final results to the respective authorities, and give in- person presentations and demonstrations of their work. The project report is an important document for the students for next few years (at least 5 to 6 years), because most of the best higher education institutions / Research organisations in India and abroad will definitely look into the contents before allotting the competent projects during their higher studies / research work. Also during recruitment good number of “product based companies” in India and abroad definitely tries to understand the value addition of a student in doing the final year project. Students can also use this document to submit to the funding agency if they wanted to start their own start-up initiatives. So by considering these futuristic opportunities students must and should give maximum commitment in executing the project.
A project is complete only when it starts working for the owner, rather than owner working for the same. In starting any project of their program the leader of the team has to involve the team members as much as possible and being the team leader he / she needs to respect the ideas and views of the other members of the team. As mentioned by Amy Poehler “As you navigate through the rest of your life, be open to collaboration. Other people and other people’s ideas are often better than your own.”
Amy Poehler might be better known as a comedian and actress, but what she has to say about teamwork applies to project management. Project of any type or any scale is a collaborative art. When we believe an actor or laugh at a comedian, it’s not just a good script and fine direction that elicits a response. It’s that the people who bring the words to life are doing so as a team. There are no stars. There is only the whole experience made successful through ego-less teamwork.
Also mentioned by Woody Williams “Good leaders do not take on all the work themselves; neither do they take all the credits. Before getting started any project for the final year, exhaustive literature reviews is to be conducted by the members of the project team, after the same, members of the team can decide what technology enhancement tool they like to develop as a project. Members of the project team should know that “Technology and tools are useful and powerful when they are your servant and not your master”. As per the Famous educator, businessman and author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey understands that tools must serve the project, not to dictate it.
Engineering students must and should know that “Science is about knowing, engineering is about doing.” Science demands rigour, proof, deep analysis. You could say the same about engineering, but at the end of the day it comes down to doing. Project team must try innovative product developments as a final year projects, sometimes one may fail, but they have to keep on trying. That’s the spirit of engineering and it’s the attitude that catapulted the world into the modern age. In deciding the project, team members’ thoughts about the project should be clear in their minds. Because once team emotions are attached to the projects, for the success of the same no one should change the ideas. As emotions of an individual / team may definitely having more inertia then the thoughts, so each one of the team member must and should concrete their thoughts on the project. Selection of the problem is a crucial part of the project work, well-defined topic completes half the part of the project, it includes material/ tool / software platform selection and feasibility, techno-economic analyses etc. Project topic should be narrow and the goal or objective should be achievable. Implementation of the project is nothing but listing the major and minor objectives of the project. Listing of the objectives also gives clarity about the project to the team; project team members can definitely add gantt-chart with the objectives so that one can commit the time period for completing the project. For the team leaders time management activity has to be followed and should educate the other peers to understand the strength and weaknesses of the work so that the work progress is intact with time.
Project team should go through following important chapters of the project in their final year. Introduction to the project, Literature survey to the project, Listing of objectives and gantt-chart, Procedure for experimental or simulation work, Results & Discussions, Conclusions and finally future scope of project work.
As mentioned by the experts’ project is a temporary endeavour with a defined beginning and end that a project team takes to meet unique goals and objectives, typically to bring about beneficial change or add value to the product or process which they are building. The primary challenge of project team is to achieve all of the project goals and objectives while honouring the pre-defined constraints. The major constraints are scope, time, quality, and budget. The minor but more wishful challenge for the undergraduate projects is to optimize the allocation of necessary inputs and integrate them to meet planned objectives. As project is overlooked by internal / external guides, the team has to believe in guide, inputs from guide will enhance their project value, the support provided at every stage, is the new path for the learning.
After executing the projects and optimization of necessary parameters, students can document their results. With necessary data available after execution of project, team can interpret the data as mentioned earlier in objective section. Depending on the reliability of the data generated team can write the necessary conclusions. If project team could not able to achieve some of the objectives with in the given time, then they can definitely list such objectives as future course of studies.
Finally the project team can look into achieving one of the important mile stone in their project journey, which is documenting their work at national / international level. This can be done by publishing their results at reputed national / international level journals. Students should know that there are thousands of journals available in the market, they need to choose specific journal of their work and communicate with publishing authorities for the documentation. Normally journals take more time for publishing the articles (because of review procedures), the time period may vary from 4 months to 8 months. So to document their work students can immediately look for national / international level conferences / symposiums for documenting their work in the conference souvenir. They also can plan for documenting their work in the journals with more information as long term plans. If students can come out with reliable and sustainable product then definitely they can document their work as patent at Indian patent office Chennai.
Real success of the project happens when you use yourself to your full potential. It does not matter whether you become an engineer, scientist, professor, salesman, marketing person or whatever; Project success means you are under-graduate program is successful. If that has to happen, you need perception and an active intelligence.
Wishing each and every FINAL year student ALL SUCCESS to Project and future endeavour.
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