Assignments, Deliverables, Distribution of Grades

There are a number of assignments that make up your final grade, the weights are listed below:

Assignment	Description	Weight	Submission Location	Due Date
Assignment 1	A1 - Team Introduction, Team Setup	2%	repo	January 13, 2025
Assignment 2	A2 - Team Exploration - Diversity and Inclusion	8%	repo	January 20, 2025
Assignment 3	A3 - Tech Choices, Architecture Diagram, Roadmap	8%	repo	February 03, 2025
Assignment 4	A4 - UX Research w/Prototype, Roadmap Updates	8%	repo	February 15, 2025
Assignment 5	A5 - Dev Env, Test Infrastructure, & Production Setup	8%	repo	March 05, 2025
Assignment 6	A6 - Class Demos	6%	class	Multiple Due Dates
Software	Software	40%	repo	April 09, 2025
Participation, Teamwork, and Communication	Participation, Teamwork, and Communication	20%	N/A	Multiple Due Dates
Bonus Assignment (Bonus)	Bonus Assignment	2%	Dev.To	March 28, 2025
	Total	100% (+2%)

Important Notes

Each assignment builds off of one another. If you don’t do one, you won’t be able to complete the next assignment as it’s rubric and requirements build off the ones prior to it.
If you do not follow the release guidelines, you will be required to submit a new release at the penalty of 1 late day.
If you do not submit the assignment on the LearnSoftware application, you will lose 1 day.
Releases must happen on the team repo

Why are the grades weighted like this?

The whole point of this course is to write software. We aren’t building an algorithm or standalone data structure - and leetcode is pretty useless in real day-to-day software development (sorry “cracking the coding interview”). To reflect this, the majority of your grade is reflected in your software deliverable.

Software, however, is not just made up of the code you throw into some files. It takes a team, infrastructure, and product work to build up something that works well. To reflect this, the other half of your grade is made up of various topics like team building, technology choices, infrastructure, and roadmapping. If you do not do well on this part, you will have a hard time truly succeeding in delivering a good software product.

It is important that your team sets itself up for success. This is why we will start with team introductions, setup, and agreements. This will require input from those who aren’t in CSC491, just like how real-life engineering work is interdisciplinary.
I believe that diversity and inclusion in a team, and understanding your own biases, make for a better team and a better product. That is why we are devoting an assignment and lecture to the topic.
You will see a lot of UX and product management-style work in much of the course (roadmapping, UX work, etc). You can throw together some code, but you need a coherent plan to execute an idea.
Lastly, software is great but unless you have solid foundations (developer environments, testing, and production) then you will have issues early on in your startup’s success. That is why we devote a lot of time to this topic as well.