Richard Wackerbarth writes:
I will take the blame for any misunderstanding in this area.
There's no blame to be assigned, really, unless to me for being a busybody. :-) If George is making these plans while consulting his mentor, that's what this is all about (but he didn't say that, so I stuck my nose in!) And maybe I misinterpreted the word "coding" which, as I continue to explore the GSoC documentation, seems to be a catchall for "GSoC work".
It's just been my experience in supervising economics and business students' research (confirmed by a lot of the academic and practical literature on managing software development) that people facing a scheduling issue tend to skimp on planning, hoping to get lucky with a first draft and as a backup, planning to revise during implementation. This doesn't usually save time in the end, and often ends with a lower quality product.
How George chooses to accomplish the planning, design, and coding, I'm happy to leave up to him (and you). I just wanted to warn against hoping that producing a plan and design more quickly than he otherwise would will save time. Time taken liberally in the early stages will conversely probably save time later.