Project Overview Presentations
One week of class is set aside for project overview presentations. Each group will give a brief presentation of their project up to this point in the class. Your role as a student in the course with respect to these presentations is twofold: you will present during one of the available timeslots and you will observe the presentations from the other groups.
Presenting
Your presentation time slot is twelve minutes; there will be a couple minutes between each presentation for setup and tear-down. You should plan to present during the bulk of that time (eight to ten minutes) with some time left over for questions. Your presentation should contain the following information:
- An overview of the project. Remember that other groups are not working on your project, so you’ll need to start with the vision. Include a high-level discussion of your key features and planned deployment from a user’s perspective.
- A discussion of your design. You don’t have time to walk through every detail, but you should give a general impression of the design of your project and point out any particularly interesting parts. You can use UML diagrams during this part to convey information efficiently.
- A demonstration of the current state of your project. Give a demo of anything you have working. Feel free to show code, a recorded video, or a live demonstration of the program working.
- A description of your project plan. Briefly indicate where you are now in terms of implementation and where you intend to be over the next few iterations.
Since you only have eight to ten minutes, you’ll need to be brief. You are strongly encouraged to practice your presentation before you deliver it to your classmates. Please note the following requirements:
- All group members must speak. You are all an important part of your group’s work and you are all enrolled in this course to learn these skills. Everyone must participate during the presentation.
- Your presentation must be organized. Your presentation grade is dependent upon the quality of your presentation, not the quality of your project. Make sure everyone knows what they need to do during the presentation. Also, ensure that the information you present is in a sensible order.
An example of a presentation given in previous years appears here.
Observing
You also have an important role as a member of the audience. Attendance is required on presentation days, even if you are not presenting! Arriving late on presentation days will also be penalized, as it will interrupt the presentations.
Pay attention to the presentations of other groups. Even if they are not working on an application similar to yours, some of their design choices or problems may be similar to yours. You should be able to ask a question of each of the groups by the time their presentations have completed.