A Master Thesis Project

at ICT/KTH
Some practical guidelines
by Vlad Vlassov and Thomas Sjöland
IMIT/ICT/KTH
 Choosing a project to perform
• In which area (topic)?
– 2G1004 Software technology; 2G1001 Computer Systems; 2G1021
Telecommunication Systems, etc.
– Should correspond to your specialization.
– See: http://www.imit.kth.se/courses/html/exjobb/Exjobbpage.html
• Where?
– At a company
• The project work is usually paid
– At a department
• A project work is not paid, as it’s considered as a ordinary course
• Examiner and supervisors:
– An examiner. Check a list of examiners assigned to topics
• See a list of IMIT examiners at:
http://www.imit.kth.se/courses/html/exjobb/examiners.exjobb.html
– An academic supervisor (can be also an examiner)
– An industrial supervisor

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 Types of projects
• Development
– Expected results: a prototype, results of evaluation (comparison)
• Research-oriented
– Expected results: surveys, design choices and issues, design
(use cases, architecture, protocols), a basic prototype,
evaluation procedure, evaluation
• Evaluation
– Expected results: models, evaluation/simulation procedure, a
simulation environment or/and an evaluation test-bed,
simulation/evaluation results
• In either case, a project includes literature study
– Relevant technologies; related work (if any)

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 A typical time plan and deliverables
4. Description of use cases
1. Specification (in 2 weeks) system architecture, protocols, etc.

5. A system prototype
2. Detailed working plan
TOC (Table of Contents)
6. Evaluation results
3. Lit. study report
7. Thesis draft
P

0 1 2 3 4 5 5-6 month
~20 weeks
Reading, studying Design, development

Implementation and evaluation

Writing and revising the report,

Prepare presentation
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 1. A project specification
• Should clearly define the amount of work and expected
results
– Important to agree on the specification in the beginning
• Can be written by
– an industrial advisor (together with a student)
– an academic advisor (together with a student)
– a student
• Should include:
– Background information
– Motivation for the project (whether it is worth a master degree)
– Problem statement. Requirements
– Expected results
– How results must be evaluated

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 2. TOC (Table Of Contents)
• To be delivered by the end of the 1st month
• TOC is a Detailed working plan
• Shows a structure of the thesis
• A short abstract for each chapter
– What is it about
– Expected results
• Should include timing
• TOC will be revised while the project progresses

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 3. Literature study
• Expected that
– you will apply a knowledge you got earlier
– you will get a new knowledge needed to perform the
project, to make and to motivate design and
development decisions and solutions
• You show your ability to search, select and study
relevant literature (papers, books, tutorials,
manuals, etc.) and related work
• A literature study report should be delivered by
the end of the 2nd month
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 A literature study report
• It’s an introductory part of your thesis
• Should include:
– Background
– Motivation
– A detailed problem statement. Requirements
– Expected results
– How to evaluate
– Related work (survey and discussion)
– Existing solutions (systems, etc.)
– Survey of relevant technologies, environments, tools, etc.
• You should choose technologies, environments, etc., to be used in
the project, and motivate your choices
– Some conclusions

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 Information sources: papers
• In proceedings
– Workshops
• Usually include papers describing work in progress, ideas (which might be
not yet properly validated and evaluated)
– Conferences
• Usually include papers describing rather completed work with strong
evaluation
– Symposiums
• Usually Include papers describing some completed work (project) with
strong evaluation
– Different scale: international, local
• Sponsored by IEEE and/or ACM
– You should find major workshops, conferences, symposiums which are
most relevant to your topic. Ask you advisors to help.
• In journals
– IEEE, ACM, Elsevier-published journals; Transactions
– Journals specialized on specific topics; special issues; surveys

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 E-Libraries
• KTH Library Full text e-journals, conference
proceedings, etc:
http://www.lib.kth.se/kthbeng/full.html
• IEEE digital library (a.k.a. IEEE Xplore)
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/DynWel.jsp
• Find the link at www.ieee.org
• The ACM digital library
http://portal.acm.org/dl.cfm
• Find a link at www.acm-.org
• You get free access, if you access from a
computer with an IP address in the KTH domain

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 Other sources
• Books
• Specifications
• User manuals
• Tutorials
• Technical reports
• Theses
• Courses
• Much information is available on the Web
• Web pages

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 What to read?
What can be skimmed or skipped?
• Should be critical to what you are reading and selective in what you
are reading
• Who are authors? Affiliation?
– Industry (.com): can be just an advertisement. However, most of
information is trusty when it’s related to research and development
• Which company? IBM, Intel, Sun, Microsoft, …
– Academia (.edu): can be a “raw” idea not properly evaluated
• Which university? North America (MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, CMU, Caltech,
…), Europe, Asia, Australia, Central or South America
• Which research group? (well established, well known in this area, etc.)
• Which project? (scale, competed or in progress, etc.)
– Consortium (.org), e.g. OMG, Globus
• Where it has been reported?
– Level of a forum (conference, workshop, symposium)
– Level of a journal

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 Typical structure of a thesis
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Background
• Method
– Presents use cases and a system design (architecture,
protocols, diagrams, etc.)
• Implementation
– Describes implementation
• Analysis
– Validation, Evaluation
• Conclusions and future work
• References
• Appendixes (if any)
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 How to describe
• Design and development:
– May follow RUP (Rational Unified Process)
• Vision, use cases, UML diagrams, etc.
– Should describe
• a structure of the system;
• how it operates;
• typical usage.
• Implementation
– Describe only most essential and important classes, interfaces,
modules, etc.
– Should give an estimate of the amount of code you have developed
– If required, docs, sources and user manuals (if any) can be placed
in appendixes
– Indicate problems (if any) that you have faced when implementing a
system prototype

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 Evaluation of results
• Validation
– Functionality tests should show that a system prototype works as
expected
– Use cases can help
• Evaluation
– Evaluation procedure: evaluation flow, input and output
parameters
• How good is your application
• Define a notion of quality, e.g. performance, scalability, reliability,
etc.
– What is performance in your case: throughput, response time, or
execution time, etc.?
• Requirements should help to define a quality measure
• How and what to measure. Ranges of input parameters. Sensitivity
analysis.
– Evaluation environment: a test-bed, benchmarks, test applications

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 Conclusions
• Summary
– What have you done, achieved, solved
• Conclusions
• Future work

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 Final stages
• A first thesis draft should be delivered to supervisors 1-
1,5 month before the presentation
– May require several revisions
• A final draft should be given to an opponent 2-3 weeks
before the presentation
• The time depends on the opponent: how fast he/she can read your
report and write an opposition protocol
• Opponent:
– Should come up with an opposition protocol to be sent to the
examiner a few days before the presentation
– The examiner can make a decision whether to proceed to the
presentation, or to postpone the presentation until the thesis is
revised (if needed)

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 Presentation
• 20-45 minutes (20-30 slides)
– May have more slides (hide some slides) to
answer questions
– Put all figures (and tables) on slides to avoid
drawing
• Discussion with an opponent
• Questions

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 More advices
• A text editor
– Select an editor (e.g. MS Word) that provides an automatic
update of cross-references, spelling and grammar checker,
changes tracker, convenient drawing tool, comments, etc.
• Literature study
– Keep a list of references
– Take notes when reading
• A project web site
– Helps to keep a list related links and show how the project is
progressing
– Take and keep notes of project meeting
– Diary
– Protect some sensitive data with a password

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