Capstone, WNE, Jackson

Overview

Course	Capstone
Institution	Western New England University
Instructor(s)	Stoney Jackson: http://homepage.wne.edu/~hjackson
Term	* CS 390, Spring 2015
Course Overview	This course provides students the opportunity to demonstrate their ability to synthesize and apply knowledge and skills acquired throughout the computer science program. Using appropriate software engineering practices, students will work in teams to substantially contribute to a significant, real world, software project.
Course Length	{{{courselength}}}
Student Characteristics	Seniors in computer science.
Prerequisites	General undergraduate CS background.
Infrastructure	Computer lab with presentation equipment. HFOSS project with community contacts.

Learning Objectives

• Work effectively in a team using Scrum to create value in a software project.
• Learn skills and knowledge as needed to create value in a software project.
• Synthesize and apply knowledge and skills acquired during your academic career to create value in a software project.

Methods of Assessment

• Attendance & Participation
• Peer Reviews
• Portfolio
  • Annotated collection of artifacts
  • Reflection report

The table below list the weight of each evaluation tool used to determine your final grade.

Weight	Category/Item
20%	Attendance & Participation
20%	Peer Reviews
20%	Portfolio - annotated collection of artifacts
10%	Portfolio - reflection draft
30%	Portfolio - reflection

Portfolios

Over the course of the semester, you will create a portfolio that documents your journey through this course. Your final portfolio will have two components:

• Annotated collection of artifacts
• Reflection report

Every two weeks, you will submit an annotated list of links to artifacts that you authored or helped author.

Annotated Collection of Artifacts

During the semester you will collect artifacts as samples of your work demonstrating how you are achieving the course objectives. An artifact has the following characteristics:

• The artifact is publicly accessible via that Web.
• You authored or co-authored the artifact, and the artifact itself makes that clear.
• The artifact demonstrates teamwork, software development skills, and/or learning.

Examples sources of artifacts:

• Commits, reviews, issues, wikis, and logs on GitHub
• GitHub Gists
• Bug tickets on BugZilla
• IRC logs
• etherpads

Example content of an artifact:

• Review of one or more articles
• A tutorial
• A log of something you tried
• Console output + description
• Screen shot + description
• Code fragment (+ description if you did not author the code fragment with source information)
• An interaction between you and team members, product owner, scrum master, other developers, or client(s).

These lists are not intended to be comprehensive. They are intended to give you an idea of what is expected.

Every two weeks you will submit 2 or more artifacts that you authored or co-authored. For each artifact, create an entry in a log that contains the following:

• The URL to the artifact.
• The date of the entry.
• A small paragraph that answers the following questions:
  • What is the artifact?
  • Which course objective(s) does it relate to?
  • Why did you choose the artifact?

Reflection Report

You will write a report that reflects on your accomplishments in this course. In it, you will describe how successful you think you were in achieving each of the course objectives. You will support your claims by providing concrete examples using the artifacts that you collected during the course.

Requirements and Expectations - 2250 and 4500 words (about 5-10 pages) - Use IEEE citation style; in particular see "WWW" and "References" - Use formal writing practices - Proofread your work or have someone proofread it for you - Ensure that your report has a clear structure

Peer Reviews

Besides portfolios, teamwork will be evaluated by peer reviews. Below are the characteristics that will be used to assess teamwork. At the end of each sprint, each team member will evaluate each other team member in the following areas using a 3 point scale.

Areas

• Meetings
  • Attends
  • On time
  • Participates
  • Prepared
• Communication
  • Timely
  • Clear
  • Professional
  • Good attitude
• Cooperation
  • Willing to help others
  • Asks for help when needed
  • Willing to receive help
• Dependability
  • Takes on responsibilities
  • Meets responsibilities
  • Follows process and team policies

Scale

• Needs improvement
• Acceptable
• Excellent

Improvement plans

If a team member receives an average of less than 2 in any area, the instructor will review the evaluation with the team. At the instructor's discretion, the instructor will help the team to create an improvement plan. The purpose of the plan is to create a support system to help the team member improve their ratings in the future.

The first time an improvement plan is necessary, no penalty is incurred. Each subsequent time an improvement plan is necessary, the peer review score for the team member who needs improvement is as shown in the following table.

Condition	Category score
First improvement plan	100%
Second improvement plan	85%
Third improvement plan	70%
Fourth improvement plan	0%

Course Outline

• Process: Scrum
• Sprint Cycle: 2-weeks
• Product: MouseTrap
• Product Owner: Dr. Heidi Ellis
• Scrum Master: Dr. Stoney Jackson
• Sprint board
• Development repository
• 2 teams: alpha and bravo
• Daily scrum meetings (max. 15 min. via etherpad)
• Time commitment outside of class: 6-9 hr/wk

Schedule

Date	Type	Due
1/12	Syllabus Scrum 101 MouseTrap Form teams
1/19 -> 1/20	Training	Week 1 artifacts
1/26	Sprint	Peer Reviews
2/2	Training	Week 2-3 artifacts
2/9	Sprint	Peer Reviews
2/16	Training	Week 4-5 artifacts
2/23	Sprint	Peer Reviews
3/2	Training	Week 6-7 artifacts
3/9	Sprint	Peer Reviews
3/16	BREAK
3/23	Training	Week 8-9 artifacts Reflection Draft
3/30	Sprint	Peer Reviews
4/6 -> 4/7	Training	Week 10-11 artifacts
4/13	Sprint	Peer Reviews
4/20	Training	Week 12-13 artifacts
4/27	Sprint	Peer Reviews
5/4	Portfolio due

Moving Forward

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