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	Method	Submission Location	Due Date
A1	Team Introduction, Team Setup	2%	Written	Repo	Sept 8th
A2	Team Exploration - Bias and Diversity Reflection	2%	Written	Repo	Sept 17th
A3	CUJ + Demo Present a critical user journey	6%	Presentation + Written	Inclass and repo	Repo Submission - Sept 24 Demo - Sept 25
A4	Initial Project Roadmap Product Definition Milestone breakdown Code release pipeline	9%	Written	Repo	Repo Submission - Oct 1 Demo - Oct 2
A5	Class Demo 1 - 5 min demo Roadmap Update	8%	Written + presentation	Inclass and repo	Repo Submission - Oct 8 Demo - Oct 9
A6	Class Demo 2 - 5 min demo Roadmap Update	8%	Written + presentation	Inclass and repo	Repo Submission - Oct 15 Demo - Oct 16
A7	Competitive CUJ (critical user journey)	6%	Written + presentation	Inclass and repo	Repo Submission - Nov 5 Demo - Nov 6
A8	Class Demo 3 - 5 min demo Roadmap Update	8%	Written + presentation	Inclass and repo	Repo Submission - Nov 12 Demo - Nov 13
A9	Class Demo 4 - 5 min demo Roadmap Update	8%	Written + presentation	Inclass and repo	Repo Submission - Nov 19 Demo - Nov 20
FINAL	Final Software Software 50% Presentation 20% Live Demo Architecture Outline learns and pivots Poster Project 20% Interactive demo Reflection 10% Individual	40%	Written + presentation	Repo, Live Presentation, Live poster project	Repo Submission - Nov 25 Demo - Nov 26
	Participation, Teamwork, and Communication Best 4/6 Attendance and asking questions.	3%		In class participation (individual)	CUJ 1, Competitive CUJ 1, 4 Product Demos

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.
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 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.