6894 · workshop in software design
design guidelines · october 26, 1998

 

intro

here's the information i gave you today in class about your design reports.
remember that we have an extreme resource constraint here: only 4 weeks
to do the implementation, with Thanksgiving in the middle! so think of
yourself as a manager making a difficult tradeoff of ambition against what's
actually feasible. this is why the report includes sections on risk, estimates
and strategy.

design proposals: consensus

these are the proposals that received the most votes. no other top-level
proposals are to be considered without special arrangement.
 

what's required

presentation for next monday, november 2
written reports and hardcopy of slides due same time

presentation structure

10 minute presentation
extract most interesting aspects of report
pick any structure you like

report structure

overview

what problems addressed, why

detailed design description

informal architectural model: say what boxes and lines mean
object models, design patterns, entity life histories
module dependency diagram
informal narrative
variants of design

benefits and liabilities

risks

what can go wrong? probability? seriousness?

cost estimates

for each component: #loc, #person-hours

strategy

implementation order (minimal subset?)
how testing will be done
fallbacks