For MTech/DD Project Students: How to plan your work
Shashikanth Suryanarayanan, June 2006

This document is meant to help you (MTech/DD student) understand how you should plan your project work schedule and what is expected out of you in different "stages" of your project. The assumption is that you have already read my note on the expectations I have from MTech/DD students. If not, click here.

Questions such as: What should I "put" in the first stage report? Should I do a literature survey? What literature should I survey? Should I build an experimental set-up? What sort of experiments should I do? etc will be naturally answered if you understand how to plan your work. The key is to begin with the end in mind. This means that you need to structure your work and decide on timelines in a manner such that the end goal is met. To arrive at a work schedule, you should work backwards in time asking yourself the following question: If I would like to have this done by the nth milestone what should I have done in the (n-1)th milestone? I will now illustrate what I have spelt above by means of an example.
 
Suppose your project is about constructing and validating a mathematical model for a robot? Suppose that your work needs to be ready for a final presentation in the first week of June 07. How would you go about organizing your work schedule and set targets? Here is a sample. I assume that the robot itself is available in the beginning.
 
Targets/Expectations for Robot Project

• Apr 1, 07 (Stage III): Ready for data acquisition - Robot should be instrumented with appropriate sensing/actuation elements; the set of experiments to be conducted planned out. Sufficient familiarity with data-acquisition tool.
• Jan 15, 07: All sensing, actuation elements and data acquisition cards purchased.
• Jan 1, 07 (Stage II): Robot mathematical model built (in detail). The predictions of the model have been corroborated against observed data on experiments conducted on a similar robot (results of which have been published). The set of validation experiments that will be conducted and the associated procedure should have been detailed.
• Nov 1, 06: Mathematical model of robot should has been analyzed to predict behaviour. Sanity checks must have been done to make sure it is not grossly wrong. Clarity about what feature of the model corresponds to what observed behaviour.
• Sep 1, 06: Structure of the mathemical model in place. Clarity on level of detail of mathematical model. Sufficient familiarity with the relevant mathematics and simulation tool that will be used to analyze model.
• July 1, 06 (Stage I): Good understanding on what model validation is all about. Exposure to the relevant math/simulation tools. Experience with the hardware associated with the project. Clear understanding of the problem statement. Good overview of what others have done to attack similar problems.