IFSM 636 0101 Fall 2001 Guidelines for Group Projects Project Teams Each project team should consist of between 3 and 5 students Factors to keep in mind when choosing your teammates are work and class schedules where you live and technical skills and experience If you and your teammates have incompatible schedules and or live very far apart it s harder to meet and coordinate your work Also it s best to have a good mix of technical skills and experience on the team Just choosing your best friends as teammates is not always the best strategy Choosing Projects To choose a project for this class you must find an organization that has some business process that you believe could be improved either by modifying their current information systems or by acquiring a new information system You do not have to be very familiar with the kind of business or activity the organization does but it is sometimes helpful What is very important is that you have access to the organization i e that you know someone in the organization who is willing to spend time talking to you and to introduce you to others in the organization that you need to talk to In defining your project you need to be able to state the problem that you are going to solve for the organization i e what are they going to be able to do better if they adopt the system that you recommend Another important factor to consider is the size of the project Do not pick a project that will affect all departments or units of a very large organization or that impacts a lot of different processes Instead choose something that affects just one department or one small organization and one process but more than one person Managing the Project I strongly suggest that one team member be designated the project leader who has responsibility for overall coordination of the project You can rotate this responsibility among different team members if you want This person will keep track of who s doing what put people together who need to coordinate and facilitate meetings Another suggested role would be the team librarian who takes care of the project binder and keeps track of the latest version of each deliverable and other documents This person could also keep minutes of meetings Another possible role would be the customer contact who would serve as the main communication link with the people in the organization you re working with Project Status You will notice that several times on the course schedule the topic is Project Discussion These are times designated for open discussion of your projects any problems you are encountering and lessons you are learning At the beginning of each of these sessions each project team will be asked to give a verbal status update of a few minutes These will be very informal sessions Each team should decide ahead of time who will give the report and what should be said After each team gives its report the floor will be open for whatever you would like to discuss concerning the project Project Deliverables Each project deliverable is described in a separate document available on the course web page and the due dates are listed on the course schedule Each deliverable must be submitted in class on the due date even if it is not complete Deliverables can also be submitted electronically via email as long as it is sent by the beginning of class time on the due date I will score each deliverable and return it to you with comments within a week of the due date You will then have one week to revise the deliverable and turn it in again ideally for a higher score Deliverable 0 is required but is not graded CASE Tool The IFSM department has purchased the CASE tool Visio Professional for you to use in this course It is installed in the PC lab in ECS 104 and you can have access to it from there You can purchase your own copy of this software in the bookstore if you want or it is available on the Web You are required to use a CASE tool it doesn t have to be Visio for some part of the semester project Visio is especially well suited to doing data flow and entity relationship diagrams Grading Each of your deliverables 1 4 will be graded on a scale from 1 to 10 As mentioned earlier you can improve your grade on each deliverable by revising it and resubmitting it In addition your final project presentation will be graded on a 10 point scale These scores will be combined to form each team s score on the project Then each individual s project grade will be determined by adjusting the team s score according to the peer evaluations filled out by that individual s teammates