How to get started with your final year project
During my last year of the engineering degree, the final year project was a big deal. I wanted to make sure my project would stand out, be aligned with the latest tech, and be relevant in the coming years. ‘The Final Year Project’ is something that adds value to your resume for a very long time. Along with giving you a taste of handling real-life problems it also gives you a glimpse of your future corporate life. It also helps you strengthen your teamwork and interpersonal skills. But choosing the right team, the right problem statement, and even your mentor can be a challenge. Immature decisions regarding these aspects can work in the wrong way and be very taxing. Here’s everything you need to know to make your final year project successful and award-winning. Honestly, most of these lessons will help you in any project and team building.
Your area of interest
The building block of your final year project has to be no doubt interest. Working on something that interests you adds to the motivation and makes you dive deeper. Above all, you enjoy the process and it does not feel forced. You remain self-motivated throughout the tenure of your project development and always end up doing more. Although you have to be practical and remember that doing a project in your area of interest needs to be somewhat achievable in the given timeline.
As long as you’re adding value, coming up with new additions , making existing solutions efficient any topic will work.
Your teammates
Your project isn’t just another activity you do with your group of best friends. While it can be a plus point if your friend circle turns out to be your project group, but there other important things you need to consider before forming a team. Being practical than emotional during such decisions guards you against unwanted complications in the future. Compatibility does matter but also does technical expertise. The combined team skills must cover an array of topics. That way everyone doesn’t have to do everything and the team can work parallelly on different aspects of the project. It is also crucial that you take the personality of your teammates under consideration. You cannot have all leaders in one group. It is profitable to have someone calm and analytical as well as someone aggressive and passionate. Try having a mental analysis of the team members you want to have in your team. Keeping the DISC personalities in mind will help you have the almost perfect team ( cause let’s be honest no team is perfect ever). You must trust your teammate.
Just like Rome wasn't built in one day trust won’t be built in one day.
Nor would I recommend that. But over time through your actions, make it clear that you are trustworthy. Take that extra effort for the team, but also don’t be an over contributor. It is important that all the team members equally take responsibility for the project while one or two of them set the direction. Imagine it like the four wheels of the car. The two at the front give direction to the car and are the ones to face hurdles head-on. But the two at the back are equally important, as the car would never go ahead without them.
Having a professional attitude, transparency, task ownership are some of the qualities that make the project term successful and smooth. Following industry practices like scrum meetings, regular feedbacks and follow-ups can prove to be a game-changer for you in short term as well as in the long run. Patrick Lencioni has rightly said
“Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”
Your problem statement
Choosing a problem statement can be tricky for some people. It is not the case where all of us have a problem statement to work on since the very first day. One cannot deny that having a problem statement ready is beneficial in terms of time available for development but even if you don’t it’s fine. The most common question that most of us face is “How do I find a problem statement?”. Well, there is no magic vault or box from where you can just pull out a great interesting problem statement. There are websites where you can find problem statements but then there’s no novel factor about it. Something available to you so easily on the web is available to others as well.
The best way to start is by reading tech news, knowing what the industry is driven by. Keeping an eye on various issues your local society, college, or city is facing can make you ponder about solutions you could come up with to solve that issue. Being aware of your surroundings can always help you get that ‘Voila!’ moment. Another reliable method is partnering with a company and working on an issue that they are concerned about. Being sponsored with an idea has its own set of pros and cons. You save on the initial struggle and chaos of defining the scope, understanding the requirements, etc. but you also end up losing flexibility and product ownership to some extent.
Your sponsor
With projects that require funding, having a sponsor helps with the financing. A sponsor is a person or company who will fund your project. It can be a monetary sponsorship, or in the form of resources with mentorship. If you’re worried about how to land a project sponsorship, let me tell you it starts with the very basic approach.
You network, you google, you ask around.
There are abundant websites that feature startups keen on partnering with students and even professionals for projects. Simply looking for companies working in the domain of your problem statement can help you find a list of contacts. Make a list of all the companies you think align with your domain and start contacting them. I remember calling and emailing 20 companies working in the IoT sector whose contacts we had collated from the internet, seniors, professors. We convinced them that we wanted to work with them and how we could add value to their company. We tried to be honest, genuine, and professional in our approach. In case of a rejection, we politely took feedbacks and had follow-ups with interested parties. Partnering with startups for your project gives you a different experience compared to working with well-established companies.
There will be several legal documents involved while working with companies. NDAs and other contracts should be read carefully. You need to be extra cautious regarding the terms and conditions revolving around the disclosure of the project statement and solutions. NDAs can turn out to be very controlling sometimes.
Your goal
As important it is to have a great idea and problem statement, equally important is knowing what you want to achieve from it in the end. While you can be as generous as you want with your dreams and visions make sure you have some tangible milestones set up. For me and my team, the long term goal was to make a difference in society with our project but we also put forward achievable short term goals like giving end product demos to the government authorities and other customers. Some helpful and practical goals to set up are
- Making an industry-standard version of your project which will be available for integration to anyone interested
- Publishing a research paper on your area of study with a renowned publisher
- Filing for a patent if your project is novel and one of a kind
- Making the research easily understandable and opensource for Tech communities and students.
Lastly, it is most important that you LEARN, GROW and ENJOY the whole process and make loads of memories cause let's be honest College is the place where you live your life to the fullest!!
