Deadline: Thursday, January 30, 2014 @ 8:00 AM
Submission: Dropbox
Link: None
Note:
The deadline is for your updated Gantt chart draft. You will be turning in your completed Gantt chart within your final report.
Summary:
For this assignment, you will be revising your initial Gantt chart draft and submitting an updated draft based on feedback provided by your instructor and TA. Ensure that your updated draft properly addresses the feedback that you received from them. When revising your Gantt chart, please take into account the following guidelines below.
- Make sure that each member is doing something each week. It doesn't make sense for team members to have gaps in the semester schedule, especially for several consecutive weeks, since someone looking at that chart will assume that person didn't do anything that week. Be sure that everyone does something every week. Well, except Spring Break (that's optional), but Dr. Hammond mentioned that you will end up doing some capstone stuff over that week as well judging from previous capstone classes.
- Segment your activities to assign them to individual team members. When assigning Gantt charts to the class, I originally didn't consider having activities being performed by several or all members, since that was something that I don't recall previous capstone teams doing. Therefore, I gave the OK on teams assigning a different color to signify all members and also allowing teams to replicate activities so that multiple people can work on those tasks. But after looking at the charts and seeing what was going on, I realized that this wasn't a good idea. The reason is that the activities that had multiple people assigned to them could easily be segmented further into sub-activities. Furthermore, some tasks that had all members working on it seems pretty vague in hindsight since it's impossible to tell what part of that activity the members are working on (e.g., poster, IRB). Therefore, adjust your charts so that listed activities are assigned to only one person. If needed, just specify what part of an activity should be assigned to someone.
- Make sure that you include the general class milestones. Each capstone team is different every semester, so it's very difficult to specify what should be put in the Gantt chart since it's dependent on the expertise of the team, the project idea, the technologies that exist, the resources that are available, etc. However, there are some general patterns that previous capstone teams have shared. This includes general activities such prototyping, surveying, training, developing, testing, and evaluating, and specific activities such as IRB protocol and posters. Be sure that your charts at least cover these activities.
- Don't overgeneralize your activities. It is important to consider that listing a general activity such as coding or testing by itself is very vague, since it's obviously required and also very vague. For example, what are you coding, etc.? Try to be more specific since it is more understandable to me that you know what you are doing, and also more beneficial to you since you have a better idea of what your project plan is.
- Do the research before listing major specifics. On the flipside, I'm seeing team listing very specific features of their project with assumptions that haven't been confirmed from surveying or testing. The risk is that you end up putting the cart before the horse by designing features that may not reflect actual needs or usefulness. As a result, it would be more beneficial to be less specific of what you plan to do first and instead focus on activities that are more higher-level.
- Be reasonable with the durations of your activities. Don't list an activity that lasts the entire semester, since that's lazy, vague, and can easily be segmented. On the other hand, don't underestimate the length of activities that should obviously be longer than a week.