Severin Kaderli
10bf9ebf44
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Signed-off-by: Severin Kaderli <severin@kaderli.dev>
178 lines
7.5 KiB
TeX
178 lines
7.5 KiB
TeX
\chapter{Project Management}
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\section{Project Plan}
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At the beginning of the project, a project plan was created to plan all of the
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work. That original plan can be found in \autoref{section:plan}. During the
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project the actual plan was recorded and can be found in
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\autoref{section:actual_plan}.
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For the first few weeks, I managed to match my initial plan pretty well. I
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spent a bit more time than I'd like on the concrete selection of my subject.
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First I planned to use a speaker as the sending device in MagSend, as a
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magnetic field is generated, when a sound is played through the speaker. After
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multiple tests and experiments I wasn't able to get useful results from the
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speakers and settled on using a CPU after some quick prototypes.
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In October, after defining the requirements for the project, my plan fell
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apart as I fell ill with COVID-19. I was sick for about 3 weeks and in that
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time I wasn't able to work on my thesis. This whole event caused my plan to
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shift behind a few weeks. I was generous in my initial planning, which helped
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alleviate this issue.
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In November, I picked up the pace again and started with the planning and
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documentation of the solution, and then started to work on the prototypes for
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the sender and receiver. I spent a bit longer on the prototype for the
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receiver as in early December I was busy with some other projects and exams.
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During the winter break and in early January, I in the process of finishing up
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the thesis report and the additional deliverables like the poster and movie. In
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the end it was a bit of a crunch to finish everything but thanks to some
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generous planning in the beginning it all worked out.
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\begin{sidewaysfigure}
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\subsection{Initial Plan}
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\label{section:plan}
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\begin{ganttchart}[
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vgrid,
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hgrid,
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x unit=0.8cm,
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y unit chart=0.5cm,
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y unit title=0.5cm, % height of title line and gap
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title height=1 % use full height for title, leaving no gap
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]{1}{18}
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\gantttitle{Project Plan}{18}
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\\
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\gantttitlelist{1,...,18}{1}
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\\
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\gantttitle{September}{2}
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\gantttitle{October}{4}
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\gantttitle{November}{5}
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\gantttitle{December}{4}
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\gantttitle{January}{3}
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\\
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\ganttbar{Prepare Thesis Document}{1}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Project Plan}{1}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Research Other Solutions}{1}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Experiment with Hardware}{1}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Write Introduction}{2}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Define Use Cases \& Personas}{3}{3} \\
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\ganttbar{Define Requirements}{3}{4} \\
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\ganttbar{Plan Solution}{5}{6} \\
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\ganttbar{Document Solution}{5}{6} \\
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\ganttbar{Define Test Cases}{6}{6} \\
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\ganttbar{Prepare Hardware for Prototype}{7}{7} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Prototype for Sender}{7}{9} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Prototype for Receiver}{8}{10} \\
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\ganttbar{Testing}{11}{12} \\
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\ganttbar{Benchmarking}{11}{12} \\
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\ganttbar{Document Materials \& Methods}{13}{13} \\
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\ganttbar{Document Future Work}{13}{13} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Abstract}{14}{14} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Poster}{14}{15} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Movie}{16}{16} \\
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\ganttbar{Finish Thesis Report}{16}{17} \\
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\ganttbar{Prepare Presentations}{17}{18}
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\end{ganttchart}
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\caption{Project Plan}
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\end{sidewaysfigure}
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\begin{sidewaysfigure}
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\subsection{Actual Plan}
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\label{section:actual_plan}
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\begin{ganttchart}[
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vgrid,
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hgrid,
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x unit=0.8cm,
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y unit chart=0.5cm,
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y unit title=0.5cm, % height of title line and gap
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title height=1 % use full height for title, leaving no gap
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]{1}{18}
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\gantttitle{Project Plan}{18}
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\\
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\gantttitlelist{1,...,18}{1}
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\\
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\gantttitle{September}{2}
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\gantttitle{October}{4}
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\gantttitle{November}{5}
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\gantttitle{December}{4}
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\gantttitle{January}{3}
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\\
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\ganttbar{Prepare Thesis Document}{1}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Project Plan}{1}{1} \\
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\ganttbar{Research Other Solutions}{2}{2} \\
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\ganttbar{Experiment with Hardware}{1}{3} \\
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\ganttbar{Write Introduction}{3}{3} \\
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\ganttbar{Define Use Cases \& Personas}{3}{4} \\
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\ganttbar{Define Requirements}{3}{4} \\
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\ganttbar{COVID-19}{4}{6} \\
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\ganttbar{Plan Solution}{7}{8} \\
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\ganttbar{Document Solution}{7}{8}
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\ganttbar{}{17}{17} \\
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\ganttbar{Define Test Cases}{8}{9} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Prototype for Sender}{9}{10} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Prototype for Receiver}{11}{13}
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\ganttbar{}{15}{15} \\
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\ganttbar{Testing}{14}{15} \\
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\ganttbar{Benchmarking}{14}{15} \\
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\ganttbar{Document Materials \& Methods}{16}{16} \\
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\ganttbar{Document Future Work}{16}{16} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Abstract}{16}{16} \\
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\ganttbar{Finish Thesis Report}{15}{18} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Poster}{16}{17} \\
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\ganttbar{Create Movie}{18}{18} \\
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\ganttbar{Prepare Presentations}{18}{18}
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\end{ganttchart}
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\caption{Project Plan}
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\end{sidewaysfigure}
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\newpage
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\section{Organization}
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All data for the project, including documentation, images, data, and source
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code was kept in a single Git repository \cite{MagSendGit}. The documentation
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and presentations were written using LaTeX with the official BFH templates.
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\subsection{Meetings}
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In the first week I agreed on weekly meetings with my advisor, unless it
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wasn't needed. For the big meetings I created a meeting notes document in
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advance, where I wrote down my progress since the last week and questions that
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I might have for my advisor. In hindsight, weekly meeting were a bit too
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frequent and bi-weekly meeting would have sufficed, but it was useful to have
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regular feedback from my advisor.
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\subsection{Mockups}
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During the planning of the solution, I created multiple mockups of the planned
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website and app screens. To create the mockups, I used the open-source design
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tool Penpot \cite{penpot}.
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\section{Conclusion}
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The project, albeit with some issues, was finished in time. The initial plan
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was only met for the beginning as the sickness delayed the rest of the tasks,
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this caused the last of weeks of the projects to be more stressful than I'd
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have liked, but thanks to generous planning it worked out.
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One of the biggest things in terms of project management I can improve for the
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next project is to plan everything a bit more. While I had some rough planning
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with my project plan, the individual points, especially the development of the
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prototypes were not fully planned. By splitting those tasks up in smaller ones,
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I could have planned around them better and might have found some flaws in the
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plan.
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The other problem was with the debugging and developing of the Android
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application. Many times I was testing the receiving of data over MagSend, when
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it didn't work, while it worked just in the try before. After much trial and
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error I found out that one of the main issues was that the logging capabilities
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of Android were quite slow and sometimes delayed the values from the magnetic
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sensor and caused wrong results, that didn't appear in normal utilization of
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the app. My takeaway from this is, to invest early in good logging and
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debugging utilities, especially when dealing with "invisible" data, such as
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magnetic fields and to use separate devices for running the applications
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as those used for developing them.
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In the end, I'm happy with the project and my results. I managed to develop a
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custom communication protocol and finish a working prototype in the allotted
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time.
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