Computer Systems Research/Development
Daily Logs, Weekly Goals, Iteration Progress Reports

• What is your goal for the day/week?
• How are you planning to implement this goal for the day/week?
• What coding or job performance is actually done during this day/week?
• What tests are you running, what people do you talk to, in order to validate or verify if your coding or work is being successful or going in the right direction for your research? What changes or improvements or new directions are needed for your steps in the project?
• Estimation timelines for planning ahead.

Here is an example of a simplified Iteration Progress Report. The idea is to repeat a particular research and development process is small increments over the course of a long time frame. Each iterative step follows a similar process:

• Plan
• Design
• Code
• Test
• Analyze and Re-evaluate for the next iterative report

If you'd like to read more about one example of a software development process, see iterative process (from "Extreme Programming")

• Plan:
  • What is the goal or needs of this iteration of the project?
  • What is/are the expected outcome(s) for this iteration?
• Design:
  • What is the design for this iteration/version of your project
    or program?
  • You may want to write the design in some kind of "high level"
    pseudo-code
• Code:
  • Any code for this iteration?
  • Testing - don't forget to write code that will test the success or
    lack of success for this iteration.
  • Coding standards - format your code to agreed coding standards
• Testing - see these types of testing
  • Are there any tests that have been used to check the
    success/lack-of-success for this iteration?
• Users:
  • Are there any users of your project iterations?
  • Anyone helping you define particular requirements
    or directions for your project?