CSCI 265 Project Fall 2025

CSCI 265 Project 2025

As part of CSCI 265, all students are required to fully participate in a semester-long team project. The project will involve a wide range of activities and deliverables, with a mix of both individual and team activities and requirements.

The project will involve a variety of activities and presentations held in the course labs (Fridays 10-11, 11-12 in building 315, room 115):

Week 1 (Sept 5): meet and greet in lab, preliminary team formation
Week 2 (Sept 12): phase 1 plan presentations in lab
Week 3 (Sept 19): quiz 1 in lab
Week 4 (Sept 26): phase 1 due (presentations in lab, deliverables by end of day)
Week 5 (Oct 3): phase 2 plan presentations in lab
Week 6 (Oct 10): quiz 2 in lab
Week 7 (Oct 17): phase 2 due (presentations in lab, deliverables by end of day)
Week 8 (Oct 24): phase 3 plan presentations in lab
Week 9 (Oct 31): quiz 3 in lab
Week 10 (Nov 7): phase 3 due (presentations in lab, deliverables by end of day)
study week Nov 10-14: no lectures/labs
Week 11 (Nov 21): phase 4 plan presentations in lab
Week 12 (Nov 28): working session (no scheduled activity in lab)
Week 13 (Dec 5): final project demos, closeout presentations, and deliverables

Team composition:

Each lab section will be divided into three teams, with each team typically consisting of 5 or 6 members.

Since some team members may withdraw from the course during a term it may become necessary to restructure some teams, and/or to change the scope/scale of some projects. If this becomes necessary it will be done in consultation with the instructor and the impacted team members.

Attendance:

With the exception of the study week (Nov. 10-14), students are required to attend their registered lab section each week unless arranged otherwise with the course instructor in advance or due to illness or personal emergencies with supporting documentation.

Every member of every team is required to attend all the presentations for their own team and for the other teams in their lab section.
Participating in your own team's presentations and providing effective feedback to the other teams is part of the process of building the professional skills you'll need for effective software development.

Assessment:

The project as a whole is worth 40% of your total course grade, with each of project presentations and deliverables contributing to that 40%. The weighting below shows how much each individual component is worth.

The teams will likely adopt different approaches to completing the various deliverables across the project phases (e.g. some may take a waterfall-like approach, some may take a more scrum-like approach), but must give formal planning and progress updates at fixed deadlines as the term progresses (as per the schedule shown at the top of this page). The course instructor will provide feedback on both the plans and the progress made each phase, but the official mark for each deliverable will be based on its final state at the end of term.

Relatively few teams get equal contributions from each team member (overall or from phase-to-phase). Because of this, each project phase will be given a team mark reflecting how well that component meets the course expectations, but each individual on the team will get a mark scaled from that based on their contributions to the component. The process for assessing contributions is discussed in some detail on the contributions page.

Project deliverables/values

Each project is marked out of 100, with the various component weights detailed below.
(Links to more detailed descriptions of each component will be provided shortly.)

Plans and presentations [20]

phase 1 [4] (plan, presentation, proposal and charter)
phase 2 [4] (plan, presentation, repo setup, standards and procedures, current state of other deliverables)
phase 3 [4] (plan, presentation, current state of all deliverables)
phase 4 [8] (plan, final demo, final versions of all deliverables)
Documentation [50]
initial proposal [3] (as per the instructions in phase 1)
team charter [3] (as per the instructions in phase 1)
standards and procedures [8] (as per the instructions in phase 2)
requirements/specifications [10]
design [10]
test plan [8]
peer and self assessments and contribution summaries [8] (2 per phase, details as per the contributions page)
Other deliverables [30] (repos/infrastructure, code, files, etc)
(note: the weighting of marks in this section will vary from team to team, based on the nature of the project)
repos/infrastructure
client and server-side code
data and support files
test infrastructure, scripts, files, and results

Example documentation:
I've posted sample versions of the various documents, based on a fictitious game project.
These documents actually follow a 6-phase waterfall approach, so won't match exactly with this year's plan, but should give a good feel for the expected depth and organization of the different kinds of document and deliverable.

Getting feedback on the project phases
I'll post feedback for each person individually, using a git repo named feedback.

The server-side repos have already been created (forked), you'll just clone your feedback repo once, then in the future go into it and run a git pull to grab any updates I've posted for you.

Getting the repo the first time:
git clone csci:csci265/$USER/feedback
then cd into the directory and have a look at file 'phase1'

Getting updates in the future:
cd into your feedback directory and run
git pull
and have a look at any files/file updates it pulled.

When inviting me to your gitlab/github project:
on gitlab.csci.viu.ca I'm @wesselsd (David Wessels), adding as a 'reporter' is fine
on github I'm DaveWesselsVIU
both use my David.Wessels at viu email address

Misc. Resources

If you're looking for information on the tools/processes we're using, try the resources page.