CSCI 265 Project Fall 2024

CSCI 265 Project 2024

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:

Week 1 (Sept 6/8): no labs
Week 2 (Sept 13/15): meet and greet, preliminary team formation and project ideas
Week 3 (Sept 18/20): teams present their project proposals and team charters (phase 1)
Week 4 (Sept 25/27): quiz 1
Week 5 (Oct 2/4): teams present their project updates and requirements (phase 2)
Week 6 (Oct 9/11): quiz 2
Week 7 (Oct 16/18): teams present their project updates and logical designs (phase 3)
Week 8 (Oct 23/25): quiz 3
Week 9 (Oct 30/Nov 1): teams present their project updates and proof(s) of concept (phase 4)
Week 10 (Nov 6/8): quiz 4
study week Nov 11-15: no lectures/labs
Week 11 (Nov 20/22): teams present their project updates (on requirements, design, state of development) and their user acceptance test process (phase 5)
Week 12 (Nov 27/29): quiz 5
Week 13 (Dec 4/6): final project demos and closeout presentations (phase 6)

(The lab time in weeks 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 will be used for the course quizzes, and there are no labs Nov 13/15 due to the university's study week.)

Team composition:

Each lab section will be divided into three teams, with each team typically consisting of 4-6 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. 11-15), 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 both 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 six project phases contributing to that 40%. The weighting below shows how much each individual phase is worth.

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

Details on the various deliverables and deadlines will be posted below.

Phase 1 [4%] Project proposal, team charter
(documents due 8pm Sept. 20th, presentations in-lab on Sept 18/20th)
Phase 2 [6%] Requirements, standards and processes
(repo setup and documents due 8pm Oct 4th, presentations in-lab on Oct 2/4th)
Phase 3 [6%] Logical design, project update, requirements revisions
(documentation due 5pm Oct Mon. 21st, presentations in-lab on Oct. 16/18th)
Phase 4 [6%] Proof(s) of concept(s), project update, requirements/design revisions
(documentation due 8pm Nov 1st, presentations in-lab on Oct. 30/Nov. 1st)
Phase 5 [6%] Project update, previous document revisions, user acceptance test process/infrastructure
(documentation and infrastructure due 8pm Nov. 22nd, presentations in-lab on Nov. 20th/22nd)
Phase 6 [12%] Final upate, document revisions, demo, completed product, project closeout
(presentations in-lab Dec. 4th/6th, all other deliverables due 8pm Dec. 6th)

Example documentation: I've posted sample versions of the various documents, based on a fictitious game project.

Revision and resubmission of deliverables

As part of the ongoing project updates, deliverables submitted in one phase will be expanded/revised in later phases (e.g. the phase 2 requirements.md will almost certainly need to be modified in phases 3-6 as teams revise their idea of what the final product will be).

Teams are expected to use that revision process to fix omissions identified as part of the phase feedback (e.g. the instructor's critique of the phase 2 requirements.md). Make sure your project update for each phase includes a short summary of changes to past deliverables, and the mark for those deliverables will be updated to reflect the changed/improved content. (I.e. you can keep fixing your past team submissions to improve the marks, just make sure your project update document lets me know what you've updated/where.)

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.