FINAL PAPER

This final paper is required for all students in the Capstone, including internship (CS 1900) and research (CS 1950) students.

FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS

The paper must be 8 - 12 pages in length, double-spaced, using a relatively standard font and point size (e.g., 12-point Times New Roman or Computer Modern). Judicious use of charts, graphs, and/or illustrations is acceptable. Margins should be of standard size.

Please ensure that your name as well as the name of the project you worked on is listed, along with your faculty advisor (whoever signed your Faculty Learning Agreement, or your research advisor).

DETAILS

The final paper should describe what you did for the capstone, and how you did it. This will obviously vary dramatically based on if you did a research project or an internship. Thus, it is difficult to give a broad-enough description of what is required for all of these. Consider the following as a list of possible topics to discuss, not as a checklist.

  1. What programming language did you use? Why?
  2. Were there things about the choice of language you liked? Disliked?
  3. What frameworks did you use?
  4. How did you handle clarifying requirements?
  5. What technical problems did you face?
  6. How did you ensure quality code?
  7. What kind of testing did you do?
  8. What was the development process like?
  9. How did you communicate with other developers/testers/customers/etc?
  10. Did you have non-technical problems that you had to face?
  11. What were the biggest challenges you faced during the capstone?
  12. Were you able to take what you learned during the capstone and apply it to classes? Conversely, were you able to use what you learned in class for the capstone project?
  13. How did you design the software you were writing?
  14. Did you present the project to customers? How did you plan for it?
  15. What was day-to-day life like?
  16. Did you have a mentor? What did they teach you?
  17. What was the worst part of the capstone project?
  18. How did you deal with ambiguity in requirements or direction?
  19. Did you learn any interesting skills during the capstone project?

In general, what I would like to see is a good understanding of what you did, and what you learned, doing the work for the capstone. If you worked on anything sensitive (e.g., for a government contractor or private data for a company), you do not need to refer to it in your write-up. If there is any doubt, you may wish to show your supervisor the paper so that they may review it before turning it in.

Example Organization

  1. Objectives
    • This project objectives were…
  2. Approach
    • I solved the problem by using X and Y technique (This is going to be the meat of your report.)
    • Communication with client was done like so
  3. Completion
    • Fulfilled initially set objectives 1 through 5
    • Did not complete 6 through 7 due to a change of requirements
    • Could not complete 8 because of technical difficulties
  4. Issues and reflections
    • Using tool X was a good decision because…
    • Using tool Y was a bad decision because…
    • Communicated with stakeholders in this way; It did(n’t) work because…

This is only an example organization. Feel free to use your own organization if you’d like but it should contain all the major components.

Other

Please feel free to email me or come to office hours to discuss any questions you have. I encourage you to submit your final paper early on to get timely feedback so that you have time to resubmit. The courseweb link allows unlimited submissions.