Course Description From Bulletin

Requirements analysis and design of a senior capstone project. Requirements analysis and elicitation methods, and prototyping. Design principles and methods, including designing for usability, security, testability, performance, and scaling. Project management and planning, including cost and effort estimation. Writing effective documentation.

What is Senior Capstone, Really?

Fall semester: requirements gathering and analysis, design, proof of concept
Spring semester: implementation, professional development, testing, showcase

Why Senior Capstone? What Purposes Do Senior Capstone Serve?

Students work in teams
Students work in interdisciplinary teams
Students work on an open-ended, loosely-defined project
Students understand the needs of customers and project stakeholders
Students understand real-world engineering challenges and trade-offs

Senior Capstone shall be integral to help students to attain according to ABET:

An ability to apply knowledge of computing and mathematics appropriate to the program's student outcomes and to the discipline
An ability to analyze a problem, and identify and define the computing requirements appropriate to its solution
An ability to design, implement, and evaluate a computer-based system, process, component, or program to meet desired needs
An ability to function effectively on teams to accomplish a common goal
An understanding of professional, ethical, legal, security and social issues and responsibilities
An ability to communicate effectively with a range of audiences
An ability to analyze the local and global impact of computing on individuals, organizations, and society
Recognition of the need for and an ability to engage in continuing professional development
An ability to use current techniques, skills, and tools necessary for computing practice

The Lessons to Be Learned in Senior Capstone

Ask questions.
Your transition from a student to practicing professional.
Iteration: think, act, do, fail, think, act, do, fail, reflect on failure, either on- or in-action etc.
Your work product is a reflection on who you are and how you appear to others.
Your interaction with others establishes who you are and your reputation.
High standards of work, conduct, and participation are the expectation.
Design is about merging aesthetics with analysis where the synthesis leads to design.
Ask questions.

Instructor

Computer Science: Ming Chow, mchow@cs.tufts.edu

Prerequisites

Senior standing or permissions of instructor

Requirements for Senior Capstone Project

Students are given considerable freedom in their choice of project, to be completed in one academic year. However, the following are the requirements for a senior capstone project:

(NON-NEGOTIABLE) Project must have a real project sponsor, signed-off by the end of September.
(NON-NEGOTIABLE) Any project done in a team cannot have more than 3 people.
(STRONGLY RECOMMENDED) Teams have a Human Factors element.

Changes for 2020-2021 Academic Year

In previous years, ECE Senior Design was harmonized with the Capstone classes in Computer Science, Engineering Psychology, and Data Science. Students did projects in interdisciplinary teams of 3 - 6 students.

For the 2020-2021 academic year, Senior Capstone in Computer Science will be an asynchronous online experience. Ron Lasser and I have agreed not to do interdisciplinary team projects for at least a year. Because of the difficulties working in teams remotely spanning multiple time zones, students can do individual projects. You are still allowed to do team and interdisciplinary projects if you would like. Sponsored projects will still be available (e.g., project ideas from companies such as Fidelity, STR).

Course Structure

The class meeting on the first day of class will be one of very few class meetings we will have. The deliverables and due dates are spelled out in "Assignments". There will be at least two 1:1 meetings with me per semester.

I am appalled by how students are generally uncomfortable with working on unstructured and open-ended problems. The problem becomes glaring during students' first internships as I constantly see comments in CPT reports such as "I wish my supervisors had described the overall structure in a little more detail" or "I was simply freaking out with the fact that I did not have an assignment with a roadmap." That's normal and reality. Generally speaking in the real world, you will not be given detailed specifications as you have been in most classes. You will also not be given details on how you will be graded on a project because there is no such thing as grades in the real world. The professional world "is unstructured, with competing priorities and decisions that need to be made on the fly. College is very task-based: take an exam, finish a paper, attend a club meeting, go to practice. The workplace is more of a mash-up of activities with no scheduled end."

The open-ended nature of the project in this course will make you care more about the project and ultimately enjoy the course more. The ultimate goal for me is to see you all "set your own schedules and let your curiosity shape the project with little involvement from me."

Grading and Assessment

If you are going to ask about grades in Capstone, the first offense is a WARNING.
The second offense is a full dock of one letter grade. And so forth.

Your goals are to take responsibility for their own learning, to have fun, and most importantly, do really really cool stuff. http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html.

Frequently Asked Questions by Students

Q: Can Computer Science seniors in the School Arts & Sciences take Senior Capstone?
A: Absolutely, strongly encouraged! In the past, Computer Science seniors in Arts & Sciences shunned Senior Capstone. We have always wanted more Arts & Sciences students take Senior Capstone.

Q: Can a JumboCode project count as a senior capstone project?
A: Yes --at long last. As of September 2019:

Any JumboCode project is eligible to become a "capstone project" - i.e., a project manager or designer may get credit for any JumboCode project.
CS students serving as JumboCode Project managers are eligible to get Senior Capstone credit, by applying and being accepted through JumboCode’s project manager application process in mid-March.
Human Factors students are also eligible to get credit through serving as a UI/UX designer on a JumboCode project, by applying and being accepted through the designer member application in September.

Q: Will we be meeting every class day?
A: No. Read the "Course Structure" section above.

Q: Am I allowed to do a project with a company?
A: Absolutely! We have a few projects from corporate partners and friends. This is great opportunity to develop relationships with a company, and learn skills that are helpful for managing a team or starting a company.

Q: Who owns the intellectual property?
A: Generally speaking, you, the students, own the intellectual property. The instructor will have no ownership of the intellectual property.

Q: Is there an archive of past capstone projects for us to see to understand the scope of a capstone project?
A: Yes, here you go.

Frequently Asked Questions by Project Sponsors

Q: What are the requirements for the company/person who submit the idea, assuming it is chosen? I'm curious of the time typical time commitments.
A: We expect a time commitment of no more than 1 hour from project sponsors per week.

Q: Does a project tend to revolve around software typically?
A: Software has been the predominant focus. We are encouraging more projects that involve hardware and interdisciplinary projects (e.g., Data Science + Cyber Security).

Q: What do project sponsor(s) contribute to a project besides acting as a client for the project?
A: (1) Occasionally provide the Capstone instructor(s) feedback about team's work including professionalism, progress, quality of deliverables, etc., and (2) answer any questions from team regarding scope of the project, requirements, design, etc.

Q: Who owns the intellectual property?
A: Generally speaking, the students, own the intellectual property.

Course Infrastructure

Canvas. This semester, we will use Canvas for Senior Capstone. The reasons:
1. For announcements. In the past, we used Piazza --which was underutilized.
2. For files not to be made public. In the past, we used Piazza.
3. For file uploads and submissions. In the past, we used Box --but we didn't get integration across different Capstone courses correct.
4. To serve as public and academic record.
5. To set deliverable dates, and hence will be on your calendar.
GitHub or GitLab - For source code and status updates.

Project Ideas

Project ideas are posted here on Canvas. The reasons:

List of project ideas can grow.
Some projects cannot be made publicly available.

A project sponsored by industry is good for several reasons including industry experience, industry contacts for your network, potential job or reference. And a multi-disciplinary is an added advantage.

Engineering Notebook and Status Reports

Each project / team is required to maintain a publicly accessible engineering notebook. This engineering notebook shall be in electronic format and be made online, one notebook per team. The notebook can be in form of a blog (e.g., Tumblr, GitHub, WordPress), thus an engineering blog. Social media (e.g., via Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat) is not acceptable. Many professional engineers and engineering teams maintain notebooks for good reasons:

To keep a running record of activities
To record ideas
To be used as a legal document for patent activities and even in litigation
To record what work was done or not done in case a person leaves a project
To highlight successes
To highlight failures and what should be done the next time
To list upcoming plans and challenges

On top of these reasons, I want:

To make the engineering notebooks available to other teams so other teams can learn from your work
To make you continue to develop your writing skills

You may argue that a Git commit history serves the same purpose. However, Git commit history is largely for the source code. This course is much more than just writing code. Example: you will be drawing and communicating visuals.

At least one entry in your engineering notebook is required each week starting in October. Each entry notebook must have a date. At the very least, your team will need to highlight:

Fails of the week
Successes of the week
Difficulties this week
Goals for next week

If your project is team-based, status report must be written as a team (i.e., no "I").