Title: College of Computing Sciences STEP Program The Survivors Course A real world team-based problem solving experience! Prepared by
1College of Computing
SciencesSTEP Program The Survivors CourseA
real world team-based problem solving experience!
Prepared by  Osama Eljabiri Director of
Senior Project Capstone Courses Presented to
Introduction Class Session (Spring 2006)
2Electing our Class Secretary
- Nominees
- Introductions
- Voting time
3Introducing Class Talents
- Full Name
- High School
- Academic Interests
- How did you end up in this course?
- What do you expect from this course?
- More about you personally (optional)
4Introductory Clip
- One success story in a minute
5(No Transcript)
6Your Course
- This course introduces strategies, principles,
techniques, and skills essential in solving real
world problems using computer technology. - In this course, technology is viewed as a handy
tool (black box) that can be utilized by anyone
regardless of their technical background. - Students will have weekly hands-on training in
project management, software economics, customer
requirements investigation, object-oriented
design, CASE tools, plug and play programming,
web development and more. - Students will create a virtual collaborative
learning organization with one mission forming
small rescue teams to solve real world problems,
compete, and survive obstacles along the way.
7Your Course - Continued
- Teams will be presented with mock-up and real
world scenarios in which they will participate in
a semester-long competition. High-scoring
survivors will be rewarded by the end of the
semester. - Scenarios are drawn from a broad array of
business, health, communications, sports, and
entertainment arenas. A broad array of games,
group-based competitions, movies, visits from
industrial and academic experts, and hands-on
training are used to engage students in a live,
vivid, interactive and dynamic learning
experience. - The ultimate goal is for each participant to
develop a portfolio of interdisciplinary skills
that would help him or her become a true problem
solver in real world projects. - A strong desire to learn, collaborate, overcome
challenges is expected.
8Background
- In 2002 the College of Computing Sciences at NJIT
introduced a completely new designed senior
project Capstone course, utilizing projects from
industry, faculty and students as the basis for
team-oriented projects. - In these projects, student teams analyze,
diagnose and model system requirements to produce
well-engineered and well-documented software
products. - The regular 491 or 492 course is offered as a
one semester and may be extended to two-semester
program during the Fall, Spring and Summer
semesters. - This course is intended to provide senior
Computer Science, Information systems and
information technology majors real world
experience in software engineering and
interdisciplinary problem solving prior to
graduation. - This course is team-based in which project
mangers and team members are carefully and
collaboratively selected to suit the task at
hand. - Course director/instructor solicit a revised
selection of industry and real world projects
from a broad array of sponsors.Â
9Your Schedule
- Class meetings every week except for the Spring
break (as scheduled). - (training and presentations)
- Teams to present after each two-week Sprint
- (5 sprints including the final presentation)
- Review Master Calendar in excel format at our
course homepage at - www.eljabiri.com
- Our online calendar is available at
- http//calendar.yahoo.com/eljabiri2
10Date Topic / Objective
1/28/2006 Introduction to course (roadmap and interactive party)
2/4/2006 Effective techniques to manage your project and study its feasibility? Teams Formations
2/11/2006 Methods to capture stakeholders requirements?
2/18/2006 Present your team progress (1) ( Competition Panel)
2/25/2006 Strategies to design and visualize your solution
3/4/2006 Present your team progress (2) ( Competition Panel)
3/25/2006 Presentation Skills
4/1/2006 Present your team progress (3) ( Competition Panel)
4/8/2006 Plug and Play technology deployment (CASE tools/Object Oriented development / RAD tools) Part 1
4/15/2006 Present your team progress (4) ( Competition Panel)
4/22/2006 Plug and Play technology deployment (CASE tools/Object Oriented development / RAD tools)- Part 2
4/29/2006 Final Presentations (5) Celebration Party (Appreciation certificates Rewards) ( Competition Panel)
11Your Resources
- Course Information
- www.eljabiri.com
- Course Communication and Evaluation
- http//webboard.njit.edu
- FAQs
- http//www.eljabiri.com/id32.html
- Samples and Examples
- http//www.eljabiri.com/id24.html
- Software Engineering Lectures
- http//www.cis.njit.edu/osama/generallecture_note
s.htm -
12Your Textbook
- None and Every thing
- No special book is required to buy
- Use all previous books from other courses
relevant to the task at hand - For the software engineering process, recommended
references are - Modern Systems Analysis and Design by Jeffrey A.
Hoffer, Joey F. George and Joseph S. Valacich,
Third edition, Addison Wesley (ISBN
0-13-033990-3). - More good books and references in software
engineering can be found at the following URL - http//www.cs.colorado.edu/tomg/seyp/books/
index.html
13Course Tools
- Microsoft Project
- Microsoft Visio
- SPSS (for research track)
- PhP/Mysql
- ASP.NET
- Camtesia (for presentations)
14Course Events
- Five Teams Presentations (including final
presentation with a panel of judges) - Jan 30th OWASP
- JJ Tours
- NJIT Open House
- CCS Career Day
- Capstone Showcase Thursday April 27th
-
15Course Additional Training
- Project Managers Workshop (Optional- Feb 1st 4-6
PM) - Jan 30th Open University Opening (including a
mini career fair) - JJ Tours
- Open University Every Wednesday from 4-6PM
starting from Feb 8th (First Three meetings
Php/MySQL covered in three sessions) - Hands-On training in our laps (TBA)
16Your Evaluation
- Teams will compete for 1000 points.
- Progress reports by project managers (100
points). - Introduce yourself assignment (on-time) (30
points) - Capstone Showcase (100 extra credit points)
- Sponsor evaluation form (200 points)
- Class attendance Total 200 points but
deductions may exceed 100 if very poor attendance
occurred. - INCLUDING (-20 POINTS for every class you
missed without a documented permission, -50
points for missing last class) - Class participation (100 points)
- All thee presentations/deliverables (including
100 points for Final presentation) (370 points) - Sponsor evaluation form , final
deliverables/presentations , final progress
reports and attendance are CRUCIAL VARIABLES that
can give extra push UP/DOWN.
17The Winners (Survivors)
- Certificates signed by both the college and the
industry for the surviving teams (75 and above) - Recommendation letters to outstanding individuals
- Gifts (TBA)
18Course Rules and Policies
- Only project managers can reserve a project. They
have - Deductions start to apply after missing deadlines
- Attendance is expected in all classes. You are
responsible for signing the attendance sheet
every time. - Attendance is expected for the entire class.
- Listening in class is required for any team,
guest, student or instructor. - You are responsible for all the information and
instructions posted on our class website.
19Your Instructor
- Biographical Sketch
- Publications
20How to contact me?
- Osama Eljabiri
- Lecturer and Director of Capstone Courses
- Room 2315 A - GITCÂ BuildingÂ
- College of Computing Sciences _at_ NJIT
- University Heights - Newark , NJ 07102
- Tel  (973) 642-7123
- Cell (973) 981-1049
- Email    oe2_at_njit.edu
- URLÂ Â Â Â Â Â Â http//www.eljabiri.com
- Calendar http//calendar.yahoo.com/eljabiri2
- Instant Messenger eljabiri2 (Yahoo)
21Office Hours
- Normal Office Hours (unless otherwise updated
below ) - Spring 2006 Regular Office Hours Thursdays 330
-530 PM - Class-based extended help hours 15 Minutes
before most classes and up to one hour after most
night classes (when available). - Walk-ins are welcome any time based on
availability. - Online and in-class help hours are always
available - Online office hours Online assistance and
orientation are available via email, webct,
chatting, etc. (whenever possible)
22Course Procedures
- This semester teams are 4-5 people each
- What projects are available?
- How to reserve a project?
- How to be a PM?
- How to form a team?
- How to join a team?
- How to declare a team?
- What to submit? What to present?
- When to submit? When to present?
23We are looking for good PMs?
- Deadline is this Friday
- Interviews are Thursday 330-530 and Friday
2-5PM (please confirm if you have applied). - We need (6-7) in 002, (8-10) in 102 and (7-8) in
104. - It is an extra responsibility but also an extra
reward - You need to apply online
- You need to be a leader not only an administrator
- Background, knowledge and experience are very
helpful but dedication is more important. - You need to respect and help your team members
- You need to be an excellent communicator
- You need to respect your project stakeholders and
work closely and intensively with them - You need to communicate with your instructor
frequently - You need to read instructions carefully and apply
them precisely - You need to be a role model in your team, the
first who attend and the last who leaves! - You need to manage risk, change and be patient
- You need to be available
- PM workshop On Feb 1st 4-6PM in GITC 1100
24Sample Projects
- From the Spring 2006
- Senior Project Capstone Course
25NO Sponsor Contact Name Project Title
1 Department of Army (3 Projects) C4ISR - SEC ITED Dominic Motolla Suspense Tracking System Software Quality Assurance Tool Assessment Software Quality Assessment Video Presentation
2 Edentify, Inc. (Project 1) Terrence Defranco Advanced Reporting Module
3 Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater, Inc. Edward Dlugosz Electronic Traveling Environmental Festival (eTEF)
4 Morphos Financial LLC (Project 1) Enrique Nunez Test Environment Infrastructure
5 Career Development Services _at_NJIT Greg Mass Online Career Development System
6 Johnson and Johnson Ketul Patel Global Supply Chain Management System
7 IMS Health Gail Pecota Data Variation Tag Database
8 Homeland Security Technology Center _at_ NJIT Bill Marshall Emergency Preparedness System
9 Orthotic Enterprises, LLC. Frank Ferrari Reinventing Orthotics
10 Rational Solutions Corp (R.I.M.S) Milind Shah Brand Recognition Solution
26Our Selected Projects for Spring 2006?
27Why our project courses?
- Students experience with traditional courses
- Boring classes
- Lack of engagement
- Lack of motivation
- Lack of variety
- Exam and traditional homework pressure
- Ineffective education
- No connection to real world
- No practice
- One source for information
- Limited timeframes
- 12 weeks are too short with all other parallel
responsibilities - Learning opportunities are limited to class
meetings and text book - No opportunity to jump start
- No post course follow up
- A huge investment with unpredictable return
- No matter what you accomplish, no one knows
about you - You cannot grow after class because it is over
- No job opportunities
28Why this course is different?
- Students are very engaged!
- They are producers of real value and NOT only
audience and exam takers (Project Deliverables). - They are teachers of collective knowledge. They
act as live résumés throughout the semester
(Presentations and Showcases). - Classes are interactive and they offer a variety
of learning methods. - All of this is in real world projects, with real
world stakeholders and within real world
environments!
29Why this course is different?
- Students learn by more than just listening
- They learn by doing
- They learn by collaborating
- They learn by communicating
- They learn by market-driven training
30Why this course is different?
- This is not an internship program!
- Students view sponsors as educators (not
employers). - sponsors view students as partners and
collaborators (not employees).
31Why this course is different?
- Students are in charge!
- Students select their projects
- Students select their teams
- Students become project managers and lead their
teams and projects - Students fire free riders even if they were their
project managers - Students administer many activities and roles
32Why this course is different?
- Students learn how to be global (not a single
project) problem solvers! - They learn problem solving strategies in class
sessions. - They use their projects as tools to learn about
problem solving in general so they can solve
other kinds of problems. - Simply put, we bring a problem solving package
to our sponsors not a number of interns.
33Why this course is different?
- Students are trained on what they need to know
not what they have to know - Class sessions are about today and tomorrow not
about out-dated techniques and strategies. - Open university sessions and hands-on laps
provide on-demand training free of charge for
you, your family, friends and sponsors. You can
even be a teacher!
34Why this course is different?
- Our course opportunities start very early and
never stop during class, after class or
graduation. - Early bird and Pioneers.
- I love to hear your questions, I love to see you
in my office, I love to hear your voice, I love
to be able to help you in every way possible. - Open help any time any where.
- Virtual Web-based collaboration.
- Continuous collaboration after class in various
ways - Job opportunities (part time, full time and
fully-paid internships). - We will always support our good students
35Why this course is different?
- Course that can be customized and personalized!
- Project work progresses in an evolutionary
prototyping fashion (Time Boxing). - Teams are adaptive to customer requirements,
responsive to change, dynamic and flexible. - You select your project, your role and your team
- You select to do technical development, research
or even become an entrepreneur.
36Why this course is different?
- Collective Intelligence
- Interdisciplinary teams from five university
colleges - Undergraduate /Graduate collaboration
- High school / College collaboration
- Large advisory community among sponsors, faculty,
administrators and students.
37Why this course is different?
- Classes can be fun!
- We creating friendly collaborative environments
- Do what you like to do most
- Learn from friends what you cannot do
- Interactive classes
- Competitions boast motivation
- Movies, games, music, off-campus activities,
presentation parties, showcases, press, rewards
and more!
38The Triple Win Multi-Stakeholder Satisfaction
Triangle
39Position Code Position Position Job Description/responsibilities Qualifications
01 Project manager Project manager In addition to managing the team, project managers will be responsible for project management deliverables including feasibility study. Should use project management tool (Microsoft Project Manager) to plan project tasks, allocate and mange resources, assign team members to complete tasks, compile team members' weekly time sheets, report task completion and actual hours worked on tasks, prepare periodic reports on project progress. Receives extra credit when successful. In addition to the criteria stated in the previous section, background in software economics, process life cycle models and project management techniques is essential.
02 System Analyst System Analyst System analysts will be responsible for requirements gathering and documentation (Problem definition, requirements report, DFDs, process specifications, data dictionary , etc) and coordinating with other team members. Experience/ background in requirements analysis, requirements elicitation techniques, and project documentation.
03 Back-end designer 0301 Data Base Designer Responsible for designing the backend of the system including data structures, entity relation ship models normalization, SQL, normalization, system structure and other architectural models (repository , client-server, abstract machine model , object-oriented design in UML ,etc.) Experience/ background in DBMS, CASE tools and modeling techniques in software engineering.
03 Back-end designer 0302 Network Designer Responsible for designing the backend of the system including data structures, entity relation ship models normalization, SQL, normalization, system structure and other architectural models (repository , client-server, abstract machine model , object-oriented design in UML ,etc.) Experience/ background in DBMS, CASE tools and modeling techniques in software engineering.
04 Front-end designer Front-end designer Responsible for designing the user interface for users (including GUI components , forms , reports , navigation , etc. Experience/ background in HCI , cognitive psychology , user interface design, user manuals
05 Programmer Programmer Implementing the system at the unit level and system level. Testing and Maintaining the system Writing user manual . Experience in web programming and other programming such as C , Visual Basic , Java, and the like)
40Projects Success RateRated by Sponsors
- In the last 70 projects we did
- 81 were rated between good and excellent
- 40 were rated as outstanding
- 9 projects were rated average and only 4 were
below average -
41Testimonials (Silent Reading)
42Testimonials
- We have 50 NJIT student interns who are
studying information technology and computer
science, working on eight projects. Having them
work for us has allowed us to jump ahead in our
work. - Larry Gardner
- CEO and Founder of Cyberextruder
43Testimonials
- This was a huge project and required much
attention to detail. The team asked the right
questions and we very helpful to Arc of Monmouth
staff in deciphering what needed to be done.
They provided many useful suggestions. - Sarah Logan
- Office Manager
- The Arc of Monmouth
44Testimonials
- I was so impressed with the whole process.
I am amazed at how talented, professional and
responsive the team was to the project. The
group of students that worked on this project
quickly understood the scope and was able to
deliver the requested tool within a very short
period of time. The entire experience was one
that I am going to recommend to other managers at
IMS. - Marilyn Mahon Group Manager, Quality
Assurance IMS Health 100 Campus Road Totowa,
NJ 07512 USA
45Testimonials
- If I had to pay a consultant to do the work that
the NJIT students did for CIT as part of the
Capstone Program it would have cost us hundreds
of thousands of dollars - The program gives NJIT students a chance to
integrate real world experience into their
academic experience, which is invaluable to them
and to us. -
- Harold Olmstead
- Vice president of Systems and Technology Services
- CIT
46Testimonials
- The solution for Cocomats created by the
group reflected a keen assessment of both the
weaknesses of Cocomats and the needs of the
Office of Constituent relations -
- Ian Thomas Brennan
- New Jersey Office of the Governor, Office of
Constituent Relations - Aide to the Governor
47Testimonials
- This group was very prompt in implementing
suggestions, very professional and timely. Based
on the scope of work initially developed, we are
very pleased with the results. - Juan Rosario
- Newark Housing Authority
- Acting I.T. Administrator
48Testimonials
- This group hung in there and were able to
work around these problems and move steadfastly
through the project. This group communicated well
and worked very efficiently. They were always on
time for the meetings and handled themselves in a
very professional manner. I was very impressed
with the work that they did. They fulfilled all
of our needs and produced a product that is above
and beyond what we expected. Overall all I was
pleased and would look forward to participating
in - upcoming projects.
- Jerri Drakes
- CEO
- The Workstation Inc.
49Testimonials
- Very well diverse group of dynamic individuals
with many skills equipped to create a website,
write a business plan, business marketing, hard
working, and capable of delivering a complete
product. - Henri Boll
- President
- Go2Museum.com Inc
50Testimonials
- As a whole the team preformed extremely well.
The direction given by TMS was an outline. The
team was able to understand what we were looking
for and implement our needs into the finished
program. - Sean P McShane
- President
- Transportation Made Simple
51Testimonials
- Jeremy (Jeremy Dela Rosa) has been very
accommodating regarding my extremely busy
schedule. He has demonstrated a strong ability
to learn and adjust throughout this experience.
Jeremy performed a terrific job in coordinating
the efforts of the team, a task that is very
difficult for any leader. He was also able to
work well as a liaison between me and the team,
ensuring that my requests were communicated
properly to all the members. Additionally, as
project manager, he was involved in nearly every
aspect of the project, and demonstrated a solid
understanding of every one of the teams - Jason Huang
- Project Leader
- Honeywell International Inc
52New Statistics
- Number of completed projects will reach at least
250 full-scale projects - A minimum of 300 products or sub-projects
carried out by more than 300 teams after 10
semesters - This is an average of 30 products per semester
plus CIS490 first-phase teams. - Many of these projects have had multi-phases and
some have involved multi-teams - Up to 6 semesters /phases for some large-scale
projects. up to 4 teams in some extremely
complex or demanding industry-projects . - Key sponsors offer more than one project every
semester - (CIT provided 14 projects in Spring 2004 alone
and Cyberextruder offered 9 projects in Spring
2003 ) - At least 1500 students have participated in the
capstone program since Fall 2002 from CS , IS ,
IT and HCI.
53More Facts
- Sponsors and projects diversity demonstrate a
broad array of interest - Examples entertainment , finance ,
health , education , public sector
entrepreneurships - Geographical Distribution These projects came
from all round NJ (North , Central and South) ,
NY or PA . We even had a project from Boston , MA
. This expands our reach beyond short-distance
businesses. - A number of companies have offered our students
excellent support for their careers . - Examples CIT, Saint Clair health
system , Edu-Global , Cyberextruder ,
All-fine-dining , IMS health - Support forms Full time employment
, part-time employment , internships , rewards ,
financial support , research support ,
recommendation letters , direct support calls ,
software purchase , company resources , certified
training , after graduation training.
54Added-value Community Benefits
- Sposnor-Sposnosr Collaboration
- Open-house Participation
- Collaboration across teams and across semesters
- Non-Profit and public service projects
- NJIT departments projects
- Commercialization of students ideas
- Students published empirical research
- EDC bi-directional support