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ECSE211 Lab 3 – Project Management & Implementation

Timeline
Lab 3 (Parts A and B) is scored over a total of 200 points. The breakdown of the points and deadlines is
the following:

Deliverable Weight (% of final course grade) Due date

Lab 3A Report 100 points (5%) Wednesday, February 5th, 2025
Lab 3 Demo 20 points (1%) Wednesday, February 19th, 2025
Lab 3B Report 80 points (4%) Wednesday, February 19th, 2025

Submission Instructions
Students are expected to work in their assigned lab groups. Lab 3 is to be completed over the next two-
week period. The lab consists of two parts. In Part A, the group will do project planning and create a report
documenting the plan. In Part B, the group will implement the project plan and deliver a presentation to
a TA. The groups should consider preparation time for the midterm when planning their work on Labs 3A
and 3B. Note that you are allowed to start working on Lab 3B earlier if you have already submitted Lab 3A,
as long as this decision is reflected in your plan. Lab reports and code must be submitted via myCourses.

Lab 3A report is due Wednesday, February 5th, 2025. Project plans described in Part A must reflect the
planned time of writing the report, as it will affect the amount of time available to you to work on Part B.

Lab 3B report is due Wednesday, February 19th, 2024.

The Lab 3 design presentation must be completed by Monday, February 19th, 2024. Keep in mind the
availability of TAs in the lab; you can only present your work if a TA is present. Instructions on the
presentation can be found in this handout.

Objectives
By now you should have finished Lab 2 and have a rough estimate of how long it takes each of you to
create a prototype of your mini-project, and an appreciation for the tasks that remain. The objectives of
Lab 3 are to give you a hands-on practice in planning and managing a technical team project to its
completion. This will help you better prepared to work in a larger team on a more complex task such as
the final design project.

Resources
You will need your lab group’s DPM kits, as well as any other readily available household items (e.g.,
cardboard boxes, scotch tape) accessible to you that are necessary to implement the system you’ve
designed. You will also need the new/updated design idea your team has selected at the end of Lab 2. You
will also need to create a Gantt chart for your group. Making a Gantt chart will help your team keep track
of your progress while working on the lab.

You can download the GanttProject software from this link: https://www.ganttproject.biz/

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Requirements
As mentioned in the Lab 1 handout, your marching band should include the following:
1) A digital flute that does not require to be blown into to play at least four different musical notes.
2) A physical drumming mechanism that plays a distinct rhythm that compliments the digital flute.
3) An emergency STOP mechanism to halt the marching band in any given situation.

The software implementation of the instrument must be done in Python 3.9 or higher.

Part A: Project Management

Lab 3A Report (100 points)
1. Project timeline (45 points)

Provide a Gantt chart for the mini-project implementation. Note that the start date must be the day on
which you start working on Lab 3B. Your Gantt chart must include:

• Project milestones
• Critical path(s)
• Tasks
• Dependencies between tasks.

Note that all tasks need a start date and an estimated end date.

The Gantt chart must be completed using the Gantt project software tool. If you wish to use a different
tool, you must obtain permission from a TA.

2. Budget (30 points)

Each member of the team should put 6 hours toward the lab per week. That is, you have around 12 hours
per person to complete both Part A and Part B of the lab.

You will need to plan the number of hours you spend on each task mentioned in the Gantt chart. Moreover,
you need to keep track of the hours spent on Lab 3A for each team member, since those should be
deducted from the available time to work on Lab 3B.

Considering this, and the tasks presented in the Gantt chart, provide a budget for Part B of your project.
The budget should be a table outlining the different tasks presented in the Gantt chart along with their
time estimate. Make sure to indicate the total number of hours in the table. You may use the template
posted on myCourses in the assignment box.

Note that the 12 hours/person cannot be distributed any other way among the team members. That is,
budgeting to have 2 members work 18 hours each is not allowed.

Example: Team 100 is working on Lab 3 together. All six members of the team meet for two hours to work
on Lab 3A. That means, each member has 10 hours they can spend on completing Lab B. They must
estimate the time that should be spent on each task such that the total is 60 hours and can be divided
evenly among the team members.

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3. Roles and responsibilities (20 points)

Each task presented in the budget should be assigned to a team member. That team member will be
responsible for making sure the task is completed. Keep in mind that some tasks are estimated to take
longer than others, hence you need to make sure that the workload is balanced.

Moreover, provide a plan for how your team will keep each member of the team accountable to
completing the tasks, so that they get done on time.

4. Meeting minutes (5 points)

Provide minutes of all the meetings you have as a team. Some teams will have more meetings than others.
Therefore, the number of minutes submitted will vary between teams.

Continued on next page.

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Part B: Implementation and Testing

Following the project management plan you’ve created in Part A, implement your selected system. Keep track
of the amount of time each member spends on each task. This will help create estimates for budgeting your
final design project.

Lab 3B Design Report (75 points)

Provide a report documenting the iterative evolution of your system design. Describe your final system, its
components and their iterative design evolutions, and related tests conducted at each stage of the design
process. Provide a description of the hardware and software components.

At the end of reading your Lab 3B report, the reader should know:

a) how your final system works.

b) how to recreate the hardware and software components of the system themselves.
c) what alternative design options to avoid (because you’ve tried them already, and they did not
work).

Sections 1 to 3 below provide suggested headings/structure of the design report.

1. System Design (25 points)

Present your final system and its components. Briefly explain how the system works. List the inputs and
outputs of your final system. Describe the iterative design evolution of your system. Provide pictures,
sketches and/or flowcharts of your final system design and of your system’s design iterations. Provide
pictures of the final design from all angles.

2. Subsystem Design (20 points)

A subsystem can be defined as a group of components that perform a specific task or have a specific role
in the system. Examples of subsystems for this lab could be (but don’t necessarily have to be):

• A “note-selection” subsystem: an algorithm that decides what note to play based on input data
• Hardware subsystem: Your hardware components
• Software subsystem: Your software components
• Sound subsystem: The speaker, along with any other component that produces sound.

You can divide your system into subsystems in any way that you think is relevant for this lab.

Describe the subsystems of you design (at least 2 subsystems). For each subsystem, describe the purpose
(i.e. the role it plays in the final system) of the subsystem. If a subsystem has many components (e.g.,
several sensors or several classes), explain how the components interact with each other. List the inputs
and outputs of each subsystem. Provide pictures, sketches and/or flowcharts of each subsystem (there
must be at least 1 visual per subsystem).

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3. Validation and Testing (30 points)

Provide 2 subsystem tests and 1 integration test conducted throughout the design process. Include any
graphs or tables reporting test results. Explain how your test results guided the iterative design process of
your final system or subsystems. Do not copy your Lab 2 contents into this section.

Full test procedures are not required for this section, but each test should have the following information:

• Date
• Goal
• Subsystem(s) involved
• Tester(s)
• Test Procedure
• Test data (in table form)
• Test conclusions

Code submission (5 points)

You should submit the entire source code folder in a .zip file on myCourses. You will be evaluated on code
functionality, style, and documentation.

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Lab 3B Mini Project Presentation to the TA (20 points)

You will present your team’s fully working system to a TA during your lab hours. Throughout the
presentation, your TA will ask you questions about your system and request a demonstration of it. The TA
will ask you about design iterations, testing and group work. All members of the team will be expected to
speak.
1. Demonstrate your fully working marching band by playing 4 distinct notes on the digital flute and
a distinct rhythm made by the mechanical drum at the same time. Demonstrate how the
emergency stop mechanism works (5 points).
2. Present your final system design and compare it to your initial system design. Explain what
changes were made to your initial design. Make sure to have your Lab 1 submission open to allow
your team and your TA to refer to it. (5 points)
3. Answer questions related to your own system design. You should be prepared to talk about the
design and implementation of any of your system’s components. (10 points)

Important: You do not need to prepare any presentation materials (e.g. PowerPoint presentation) for the
Lab 3 Presentation.

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