Instructor: Dr. Melody M. Moore

Phone: 404-651-0878

Email: melody@gsu.edu

Office: CBA 923

Class website: http://www.cis.gsu.edu/~mmoore/CIS4980

Prerequisites: All required BA and CIS 300-level courses; CSP 1

Students MUST be CIS majors at Georgia State

CIS 4980 provides students with an opportunity to apply knowledge and skills acquired in the core CIS curriculum to a large and complex problem, and to gain experience working in a team.

Texts : Managing a Programming Project, 3rd Ed., Metzger & Boddie, Prentice Hall.

Say it in Six, Hoff, Universal Press

Presentations Plus, 2nd Ed., Peoples, John Wiley & Sons

Students will apply skills learned in previous course work on a full-scale systems development project for a real client organization. Student teams will conduct a feasibility analysis, develop a project plan, and produce a requirements specification for their project. They will design, develop, and test a prototype of the specified system and will develop plans for its implementation. Upon completion of the course, students will have developed a complete set of systems development documentation, a working prototype of their system, and written reports on their project. They will gain experience with oral presentations of their work. Course grades include evaluations by the instructor, by student peers and teammates, and the client organization.

CIS 4980 is designed to provide experience in working with a client organization throughout the analysis, design, and prototyping stages of the project lifecycle. In performing these tasks, the students will demonstrate the ability to:

• Define project boundaries, assess feasibility, and establish a project schedule
• Analyze an organization’s information systems to develop system models
• Develop a requirements specification and a design document
• Plan the development, implementation, and testing of a system
• Develop a working prototype of a system
• Prepare and present written and oral reports to the client organization and to the class
• Manage and control a project from beginning to end
• Learn team dynamics and effective methods for working in a group
• Learn to assess the work of others and give constructive feedback

In the beginning of the course, students will form teams and be assigned a project for a client organization. Throughout the semester, there will be three due dates for project milestones that will include a written report and an oral presentation of the team’s progress to the class. The last presentation will be a "dress rehearsal" for the client presentation that is given at the end of the course. The team’s work must be approved by the instructor and the class before presenting it to the client.

Other class time will be spent meeting with client organizations, working in teams, and in class discussions (subjects to be decided as issues arise). It is a requirement of the course that each student be available for client meetings during business hours as required.

Each team will maintain a web-based project notebook containing all project artifacts. All plans, documents, presentation slides, status reports, and code the team produces will be accessible from the website. The website will be maintained to at all times reflect the current status and products of the team. Only the final report for the client will be submitted in hardcopy (although the report must also be accessible from the team web page).

The deliverables for this course may be dependent on the nature of the assigned project, but at a minimum will include:

• Engagement letter - A professional business letter to the client indicating the exact work the team plans to do, a high-level functional specification of the desired system, and an outline of the documentation and prototype the team plans to produce. The letter must clearly state that the resulting system will be a prototype for demonstration purposes only, not a guarantee of a complete product.
• Project Plan - A plan for the entire semester including a list of deliverables, resources needed, project schedule including milestones, and a resource plan. The final report will show the project schedule as planned and as actually executed.
• Requirements Specification - A document specifying the detailed functional and nonfunctional requirements of the proposed system. The document should discuss the analysis method used to elicit the requirements.
• Design Specification - A document describing the design for the proposed system. The document should clearly state the design method and the notation used in diagrams should be standard.
• Working prototype - Code and test data for the prototype of the proposed system. Prototype must be tested and demonstrable.

Process deliverables are produced as part of the operational activities of the course, and are required of all students:

• Progress log - Each student will keep a weekly log of activities, meetings, and results, to be compiled by the team and posted to the team website. The log will include the date, time, location, and purpose of the meeting or activity, who was present, a description of the activity and the results (including deliverables produced). The log will also include estimates of hours spent by each team member on each deliverable produced by the course. Final summary project logs will be signed by each team member.

• Assessments - Evaluating the work of others effectively is an important skill. Each student will provide several assessments of themselves and others throughout this course:

- A written self-assessment at the end of the course detailing performance

- A written assessment of the performance of each teammate (confidential)

- Written critiques of another team’s performance on a presentation or artifact

Teams cannot make progress without the participation of all team members; therefore participation is an important part of the CIS4980 grade. Class attendance is required, every class will include an in-class assignment that will be graded. Meeting attendance outside of class will also be recorded in the project notebook and will count in the performance grade. If it is unavoidable for a student to miss class, the work may be made up through special PRIOR arrangement with the instructor (except in cases of bona-fide illness or emergency, which must be documented). Any student missing more than two classes will be automatically withdrawn.

Grades are based on the following course components:

• Written project deliverables (includes web pages, specifications, documents, and code)
• Oral presentations - each student must deliver at least one substantial oral presentation during the class
• Process deliverables
• Assessments of the student’s work by peers (teammates) and classmates. This includes ability to work in a team environment.
• Assessment of the team’s work by the client, instructor, and other teams
• Class participation.

Following are the grading guidelines:

F - Failure to fulfill the minimum course requirements (omitting a deliverable, etc.)

D - Substandard implementation of minimum course requirements

C - Satisfactory implementation of minimum course requirements

B - Excellent implementation of minimum course requirements plus additional deliverables

beyond the minimum

A - Outstanding implementation of minimum course requirements plus additional

deliverables considerably beyond the minimum