Opening Comments: Changes and Consequences

As you all realize, the Capstone course has been reconfigured under the new CS program, moving from a 1-credit Fall lab and a 3-credit Spring course to a single 4-credit spring course. What this means is that we have to pack everything into the spring term; things are going to be somewhat more intense --- but then you also get 4 credits for the experience.

Preamble: Things that apply to the whole process

• Weekly Supervisory Meeting. Each team will meet weekly with Dr. Doerry to review progress and discuss obstacles; a weekly meeting schedule has been set for this. During this meeting, we will go over the team's past, present, and future tasks, and discuss overall progress. The length of this meeting is 15-30 minutes. Teams MUST be on time and come prepared bring the following items to the meeting:
  • The team's weekly task report (See: Guideline for Team Task Report format.)
  • A current copy of their project timeline, with focus on current timepoint. We'll use this to stay in touch with the big picture.
  • The latest weekly status report sent to client.
  
  
• Client Contact. The team should remain in continual contact with the client. All such contact should be formal (i.e. polite and polished) in nature and should be documented. See the Guidelines for Client Contact for guidelines on formalizing team-client interaction. To keep the client and all team members on the same wavelength with respect to team progress and project status, teams are obligated to file weekly status reports. See the Guidelines for Status Reporting for details.
• Team Disciplinary Procedures. If you're lucky, your team will function well and professionally at all times, right from the start. Reality doesn't generally work that way though; this is true in professional practice, but especially true here in the Capstone class, where everyone is still honing their teaming skills. Usually this is no big deal...just a few little hiccups, which are quickly resolved by the team; totally normal. On occassion, sadly, a team member starts creating serious problems in the overall team dynamics through failure to perform assigned tasks...or failure to perform them in timely or adequate fashion. In real life, this will draw the attention of a good project manager, who will then (one hopes) apply consumate project management skills to try to remedy the problem. If that doesn't work, serious sanctions result. At very least a good project manager will exercise damage control by removing/replacing the weak link in the team, allowing the project to succeed...and if that happens more than once, the bad egg generally ends up looking for a new job. We've developed a parallel process for dealing with disfunction in our CS upper-division teams, to ensure academic integrity and fairness to hard-working students.
• Documenting progress. The team will need to continually maintain the project website. I may visit the team websites at any time after the initial weeks of the course, so it is important to keep them up to date!
  Relevent Guidelines: Project Website Guidelines

Office Resources: You will need access to various office resources to support the wide range of contact/publication/presentation requirements within the Capstone process. Some of these resources are made available to you through the Capstone program, others you will need to provide yourself. Please review the Capstone Office Resouces Guidelines Document to understand the access and constraints that govern use of CET resources.

Conceptual Description of the Capstone Phases

Approximate Capstone Timeline, with links to details: