CSCI 6838 Capstone Projects
Guidelines For Project Web Page

by K. Yue, last modified: August 2007

I. General

Each technical team must maintain an active Web page for the capstone project. The URL of Web page should be:

http://dcm.uhcl.edu/cap<#semester_Year>gp<#n>/

where <#n> is the team number. For example, the URL of team #3 of the Fall semester is:

http://dcm.uhcl.edu/capf07gp3/

User accounts and passwords will be assigned in the first week of the semester. The project Website should be set up within the first two weeks of the semester.

Actively maintaining a project Website is beneficial:

• It facilitates communications and feedback between team members, the instructor and the mentor.
• It provides a structural support for managing the project.
• It strongly benefits the writing of the final report and presentation.

The Web site should be professional. There should be no broken links. Spelling and grammatical mistakes should be avoided. They will be checked at the end of the semester.

The team accounts will be kept as long as possible and can be used by the individual and UHCL:

• As showcases for external companies interested in sponsoring capstone projects.
• As examples for students taking capstone projects in the future.
• As links from individual resumes to showcase their projects.

The team must select a Webmaster to maintain the Web page. The Webmaster is also responsible to ensure that other team members are able to update the Web page actively.

II. Contents

All information about the project should be accessible through the Web page, if possible.

The following sections are the minimum requirements. If your team is working with an external project, parts of the site may not be open to the public and access control may be required.

General Project Information

This section contains general information about the project:

• Project title.
• Project abstract.
• Customer/Mentor Information.
• Faculty advisor contact.
• Team member information: name, email, Web page, major, etc.
• Technologies used.

Deliverables

This section contains project deliverables and their descriptions:

• Design and modeling document, including UML diagrams, relational schema, software model, etc.
• Source code: including a well described collection of source code of the project, coding standard guideline, etc.
• Project prototype documentation: startup, FAQ, tutorial, guideline, reference manual, etc.
• Presentations: power point files of all presentations.
• Reports: the final report, any technical reports, project weekly status reports and individual member progress reports.

Project Management

This section contains artifacts for managing the project.

• Roles and their responsibilities: for example, team leader, Webmaster, dba, etc.
• Role assignments.
• Tasks and their descriptions.
• Schedule and timeline: use a Gnatt chart (a table listing all tasks, task assignments and planned and actual start date, end date and duration.)
• Meeting minutes: minutes of team and mentor meetings.
• Feedback from faculty advisers and customers.
• Configuration management, if applicable.
• Budgeting information, if needed.

Resources

This section maintains resources beneficial to the projects. Each team member may come across useful resources, such as related articles, pages, examples, tutorials, how-to, etc. They should be well-organized for ease of use.

III. Layout

There are not too many specific requirements for page layout except that it must be consistent and compliant to either HTML 4.0 or XHTML. Use CSS. Navigation should be simple and functional. Use left-side menu, if possible. HTML editors are ok.