Project Schedule

Your class project is a real world analysis of one of several critical business issues in IT. Projects are not competitive in any real sense and I will grade them on the quality of your contribution to my knowledge. You should treat this as a business problem. I will be available for meetings with your group. These meetings should also include one of the resource people so I will have to coordinate with them as well. Plan at least two meetings with me during the semester. One early and one when you are finalizing your work. I expect written outlines of what you want to work on ahead of time. These can be simple bullet lists e-mailed to me, but they should be available ahead of time. Other meetings should be scheduled as you need them.

You will be assigned an industry contact. You should call them 3-5 times during the semester. I want to be notified ahead of time about these phone meetings and may attend some of them. Fax or e-mail your contact some short working documents ahead of time and arrange an appointment for the call. You may use University facilities if you need to. The focus of the calls should be to get real business feedback on your ideas.

October 1, 1996 Three Page Project Definitions

Three page analysis of the importance of the stated problem and a specification of what you are going to study.

October 5, 1996 Project Definition Posted to CMISS Notes File (ABS)

I will review and copy your papers into a Lotus Notes discussion set for comments by the CMISS industry partners. We may get some insights from them, but your primary resource will probably be your industry consultant.

October 31, 1996 Critical Issues Analysis

This paper (3-5 pages) should narrow the scope of your first problem statement and identify the most critical issues in dealing with your problem. Expanded bullet summaries are quite acceptable.

November 26, 1996 Project Final Draft

Three page stand alone executive summary. I may hand this out separately from the analysis. No page limit on the analysis. The quality of your thinking and the organization of your research will be critical here. We also need a 'Balanced Scoresheet' setof measures that we can use to compare the effectiveness of different approaches to your problem. Remember, this will be circulated to potential employers with your name on it.

December 3-12 Project Presentations

Twenty minutes. Plan for a PowerPoint presentation with appropriate handouts.