Project Logistics

Sometime before the third week of class, students will be organized into teams of 5 to 6 members. During the third and fourth week of class, project sponsors will visit the class and present their vision of the project they would like to see implemented. Teams select their top three choices.

By the fifth week of the course, projects are assigned to student teams based partly on the teams' skill sets and partly on their interest in each given project.

After the project assignment, teams will schedule weekly status meetings with the Instructor. These will be formal meetings with each team member responsible for reporting on their particular activities and the status of their individual deliverables during the preceding week. Attendance at these meetings will be mandatory unless specifically excused. Failure to attend, or chronic inactivity as determined from the weekly status report will reflect on a team member's Participation Credit.

Teams will also be expected to meet monthly with their project sponsor to ensure that they continue to align with the sponsor's vision and have not deviated from the sponsor's expectations. Sponsors should be viewed first as a customer and only secondly as a resource. While customers may be willing to help, ultimately it's the team's product.

Correspondingly, these status and sponsor meetings will replace regular class meetings. However, special class meetings may be called with attendance expected, so Monday evenings should be kept open. The project will be assessed on both whether it succeeded or failed as well as the process that was carried out to develop the project.

Teams will present their project plans to the rest of the class during the regularly scheduled final exam period of the first term of the class. The project should be delivered to the customer approximately two weeks before the end of the second term of the class. Each team will give a public presentation of their project on the Friday of the second term's Final's Week.