51:085 / 51:178 Biomedical Engineering Senior Design
Periodic Project Status Report Guidelines

Good communication within a project team and with other parts of the organization (e.g., your manager) is essential to keep the work going smoothly. As part of your senior design project, you will periodically give your project mentor and course instructor written status reports that describe your progress, level of effort, and problems you have encountered.  To keep track of this data you team might consider keeping a logbook or project notebook where you can store notes from meetings and describe other project-related activities.

Formatting:

• Electronic submission by email

• Send to project mentor, carbon copy to Prof. Mackey

• Submit report as plain ASCII text, PDF, or word document.  If figures and/or tables are required, include them in the body of the document, not as separate attachments in the email

• You can format the document however you choose, however the first few lines should include the project title, the group members' names, the project mentor's name, the course number, and the date.

• Here is an example email message that might serve as a status report.

Content:

At a minimum, your progress report should include these items:

• Summary of achievements since last status report

• List of current tasks and who is working on them

• Outstanding problems ("roadblocks")

• Summary of group meetings or other project-related activities since last status report, and who participated

Grading:

Status reports that are formatted properly, address all of the points in the "Content" section, include "believable" activities and progress, and are handed in on time will receive full credit.