Final Year Project

I haven’t been able to post “meaningful” stories nowadays. I’m quite busy with uni life; assignments and tests. I no longer have enough time to write. The scary final exam is coming very soon. I’m desperately waiting for the exam’s draft timetable to come out. Then there’s a winter break afterwards (Yay~!). Anyway, in this post, I want to share my stories about the final year IT project (FYP) that I currently do at uni.

At UQ, the FYP is treated like a normal course. We still need to attend lectures, tutorials, and practicals (labs). The materials taught in the lectures are related more to the project management, e.g. how to produce a good Project Plan, manage a team, and manage the issues and risks. Therefore, programming is not taught in this course. It’s practically up to us to choose which programming language we want to implement in our system. We will have a final exam too! The difference between FYP and other normal courses is that FYP runs for 2 semesters (1 year). The first semester consists of 2 phases: Initiating and Planning. The second semester is focused on Executing & Controlling (coding!!! that’s what I’ve been waiting for!) and Closing phases. For each phase, there are several deliverables (assessment items) to be submit. For example, in the Planning Phase (now we’re in this phase already), we have to submit several items: Project Plan, Software Requirements Specification, and a system prototype. Each of these items need to be submit fortnightly.

This course is intended to be a replica of most “real” projects exist in IT industries. Lecturer acts as a client (project sponsor), therefore he is the one who suggests the topic of the project. Students are those who run/manage the project. These students are divided into a team of 7 members. Each of these teams has a project manager. All teams implement the SAME system based on the topic decided by the lecturer, but each team might implement the system differently; be it different software, programming language, etc. I was told that: up until last semester, this course was taught by 2 professionals; not UQ lecturers. They were experts in project management and worked for other company; so they came to the campus ONLY twice a week. Unlike the system in Indonesia, where lecturers are damn hard to be found, lecturers here are required to have a sufficient amount of time for the students (for consultation). So it’s not a surprising thing that many students complained to these professionals (who are basically their clients), because of their limited consultation time. The only time they could “meet” with clients were during a 1-hour client interview which was held each week. That’s not enough. How did these professionals react to their complaints? “That’s exactly what happens in the real world! It’s never been easy to arrange a meeting with clients. They are nowhere to be found! You just have to face it.” Phew. It’s so true.

Unfortunately, due to the shortage of student enrolments in IT degree (which result in reducing the number of IT academic staffs), the School of ITEE decided to appoint 2 UQ lecturers — Paul and Xue Li — to take over and teach the course. Students who enrol in this course in this semester are basically disadvantaged (including me!). But it’s ok! Paul has so far done a great job! This course is neatly managed. We are given a deliverable schedule for the whole duration of the course (1 year) which lists the fixed due dates and detailed description of every single deliverables that need to be submit. In that way, we can plan everything in advance. We also have a client interview every now and then. We will also have several client negotiation meetings in the second semester. It’s gonna be exciting.

And now… I want to talk about how the students are assigned into teams (I mentioned about it already, but I’ll write it again hehe). The lecturers are those who divide us into groups, taking into the consideration of our GPAs, interests, and availability (to avoid clashes of schedule between members of the team). When one student complained about this, Paul said, “In a real project, you don’t get to choose who you want to work with. You have to work with strangers. Whether they are smart or dumb people, you still have to deal with them!” And should I say this again??? I’m VERY lucky to be in the most amazing and hardworking group I’ve ever had!!!

Yes, I’m very happy. We get along quite well. I’m thrilled to see how my group is able to manage everything SO neatly and organised. We have deliverables (assessment items) due every fortnight. So, we submit the assignment on Thursday, have a meeting on Friday to discuss on upcoming deliverables, assign tasks, and start working on them immediately (although the upcoming deliverables are due in 2 weeks). As a person who likes to procrastinate, all I can say is: I’m amazed! Hahaha. I mean, doing an assignment 2 weeks before it is due??? That’s a rare thing for me! The enthusiastic environment in my team really boosts my mood, makes me want to work harder, AND prevents me to procrastinate all the time. Isn’t it GREAT??? Well, not only that! I was even surprised when we managed to produce a 90+ pages Project Plan! I asked the other group, their Project Plan only consists of 45 pages. We did put so much effort and detail in the Project Plan. And I think that’s really good .

Let me introduce you to the members of my amazing team (we have an organisational chart btw). The most important man is, of course, Murray. He is appointed as the project manager of our team. He is the one who monitors everyone’s work, approves all documents, and makes decisions to control risks and issues arisen in the team. He’s very responsible and hardworking; he makes corrections on other people’s work — and sometimes the corrections that he made are too many that it seems he’s the one who’s doing the work! hahaha. He likes to encourage his fellow team members and frequently give praises on their works. “You did a fantastic job, Amalia!” That’s what he always says. During stressful weeks, his praise motivates me to do more. It really helps. Thanks, Murray!

The next-most-important man in our team is Linus. He acts as a secretary. He is the one who compiles, formats, prints, and binds all the documents prior to each submissions. He’s the most proper and neat guy I’ve ever met! He’s the only guy I know who is a vegetarian — not because of a religion, but because of health reasons! Wow!! Guys usually don’t care about whether they eat healthy foods or not; they even hesitate to eat veggies and fruits! But Linus is an exception. His life is very organised. He sleeps no later than 10 pm everyday. The role of secretary suits him a lot!

The other remaining members act as a leader of a subgroup and involve as a member of several subgroups. David heads the programming subgroup. We call him a “programming guy”, since he knows a lot of things about programming. He is the tutor of one of the hardest courses I took!! He is very smart! He knows all technical stuffs and always comes up with so many technical terms and vocabularies that we never think or even hear about . We are glad to have him. Then there’s Keith who heads the testing subgroup whose job is to perform testing to the system. All I remember about him is that he’s a transfer student from Nanyang University, one of the top universities in Singapore (correct me if I’m wrong). He seems very quite, but his idea and opinion sometimes surprises other members in the group. We always say, “Let’s hear what Keith wants to say!” And everyone suddenly becomes quite and pays attention to him. LOL. Then there’s Riza who heads the database design subgroup. She’s a VERY sweet and smart Indonesian girl. She’s a transfer student from the University of Indonesia (international program). There’s also a documentation subgroup which is led by Lynn. She talks quite a lot — and very fast too… just like other Singaporeans. But she is so smart and works very fast. What about me? Well, I head the user interface subgroup. I’m the one who designs the website, as usual. I’m a member of programming and database design subgroups as well. I’m also the treasurer of the team — I collect money and record all the expenses we make, mostly for printing (colour!) and binding purposes.

Although my time in this semester is mostly spent for FYP (and sometimes I get so stressed about it), I realise that this course is one of my favourite courses at UQ! And I believe that, at the end of this year, it’ll be my MOST favourite course I’ve ever taken! I learn so many (boring and interesting) things that could be very useful by the time I work in the IT industry and be involved in a huge project. This course gives me a clearer picture (previously it’s a vague one!) on how the IT project works and prepares me to face the REAL one in the future (amiiin…). And I think… FYP (done in group) is thousand times more worth and valuable than writing a thesis or even doing a FYP individually!!! (doing a FYP individually is quite common in Indo) Man, you’re going to work in team all the time if you work in IT companies! Oh, I’m so glad that I study at UQ!!!