]
]A good project course is more about "learning something" than it is about "producing something". At the end, you are trying to prove that you did the project well, but also, and more importantly, you can do it even better in the future (that is, you have learned something from this experience that made you a better software engineer).
A project course expects you to learn something at every step of the project. When things go wrong, not only you correct the mistakes, but also you learn why it went wrong, and how to avoid the same mistake in the future. When things go well, you still try to figure out why, and how to repeat the same success in the future.
Of course, the only way for the evaluators to know how well you learned from your project experience is if those lessons are mentioned in the report/presentation.
There is not enough time to make every mistake possible and learn from it. A smarter way to learn is to learn from other people's experience.
Learn, and use, famous quotes related to software engineering. A quote contains a gem of wisdom that has stood the test of time. They are easy to remember, and impressive to use.
Read books/articles that are based on software engineering experiences (not those thick theory books). Most of them contain lessons learned from decades of real software engineering experience. They contain interesting anecdotes, and often written in an easy-to-read story-book style. For some pointers, see the "Further resources" section below.
How well you learn from experience is a gauge of your maturity, and deserves a lot of extra credit. Unfortunately, most lessons are learnt and used without even realizing it. Please make an extra effort to record them somewhere and present them to the evaluators in some form.
by Fred Brooks
by Steve McConnell 
by Gerald M. Weinberg 
by Andrew Hunt, David Thomas. A
definite "must read" for any budding software engineer.
by Ed Yourdon - A book about surviving difficult projects (the so called "death
march projects").Any suggestions to improve this book? Any tips you would like to add? Any aspect of your project not covered by the book? Anything in the book that you don't agree with? Noticed any errors/omissions? Please use the link below to provide feedback, or send an email to damith[at]comp.nus.edu.sg
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Sharing this book helps too! |
---| This page is a part of the online book Tips to Succeed in Software Engineering Student Projects V1.9, Jan 2009, Copyrights: Damith C. Rajapakse |---