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 excluding the front matter (the title page and the table of contents), 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 encouraged. Margins should be of standard size.

Here is a template that you can use: https://etd.pitt.edu/learn-template.

There are example Word and Latex templates on that page. Now you are not writing a thesis so you don’t need most of the front matter, except for the title page and table of contents. The title page can should have your name as well as the name of the company / lab you worked on is at the header, along with your faculty sponsor for CS 1900 students or your research PI for CS 1950 students. Of course, your table of contents will not have the same sections and subsections. Examples of paper organizations are given in the next section.

Regardless of what organization you use, your paper should be organized hierarchically into sections / subsections with corresponding section / subsection headers. Each section should focus on the topic described in the section header. A section should comprise of one or more paragraphs that are well-focused on the section topic. Papers without section and subsection headers will not be accepted.

Paper Organization

At below are example organizations for either internships or research apprenticeships. These are given to you just to give you an idea of what an organization looks like. Please feel free to use your own organization.

Example organization for CS 1900 students

  1. Introduction
    1. The company and what types of products it makes.
    2. Placement of my team in the organization.
    3. How the rest of the paper is organized.
  2. Project 1
    1. Objectives / Motivation
      1. Business need for my work.
      2. Expected final outcome of my project.
    2. Implementation
      1. Overall software / hardware architecture
      2. Programming languages, frameworks, and tools used.
    3. Technical challenges and how I resolved them (if relevant).
    4. Non-technical challenges (client communication etc., if relevant)
    5. Outcome
      1. Final outcomes of my project.
      2. Business impact of the outcomes.
  3. Project 2
    1. Objectives / Motivation
      1. Business need for my work.
      2. Expected final outcome of my project.
    2. Implementation
      1. Overall software / hardware architecture
      2. Programming languages, frameworks, and tools used.
    3. Technical challenges and how I resolved them (if relevant).
    4. Non-technical challenges (client communication etc., if relevant)
    5. Outcome
      1. Final outcomes of my project.
      2. Business impact of the outcomes.
  4. Issues and reflections
    1. Reflection on what I learned from the internship. Were you able to fulfill all your learning goals? Did the Pitt CS curriculum help you attain those goals?
    2. Issues in your organization that prevented you from reaching those goals (e.g. supervisor did not mentor you, there were organizational barriers, or employer changed goals when you got there).

Example organization for CS 1950 students

  1. Introduction
    1. Research group and the area of research.
    2. Research question that motivated this research.
    3. Talk about how the rest of the paper is going to be organized.
  2. Background
    1. Concepts, tools, pre-existing work that is necessary for understanding the contributions (with subsections for each).
      • Limit the background to what is necessary to understand your work (for a CS undergrad).
  3. Contribution
    1. Contributions of research to the state-of-the-art.
    2. My own contributions to the research.
  4. Implementation
    1. Description of implementation at a high level with details in subsections.
    2. Programming languages, frameworks, or tools used.
    3. Technical / research challenges and how I resolved them.
  5. Outcome
    1. Final outcomes of my project(s).
    2. Impact of the outcomes to research.
  6. Issues and reflections
    1. Reflection on what I learned from the internship. Did you learn something new and exciting?
    2. Issues that prevented you from reaching those goals (e.g. advisor did not mentor you, did not have time to learn background for research, or advisor set to high expectations).

Paper Content

If you are unsure about what to put on the paper, consider answering some of the below questions. 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, through the experience. 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.

Other

Please feel free to email me or come to office hours to discuss any questions you have.