The Project
To help you learn what software development is really like, you are all working for project managers, with little to no understanding of software development, who are under the gun to deliver a new web application. The gap between what they know and need to know, and what you know and need to know, is enormous. Just like real life.
The specific nature of the project depends on the clients you have, and the clients depend on which quarter of EECS 394 you are in.
- Fall: Your clients are teams of masters students in the Masters of Product Design and Development program. The project is a smartphone application.
- Spring: Your clients are either teams of students in the NUvention Web entrepreneurship course, or Northwestern faculty in need of product development. The project might be a smartphone application or interactive website application.
Though these clients differ greatly in age and experience, some things are true across the board:
- Most of the client teams will have little or no software project management experience.
- Those with general project management experience will be unfamiliar with agile processes.
- The product vision will be unclear in many ways, and certain to change dramatically.
- No one is full time.
- Everyone is distributed geographicallly.
All of these raise significant challenges to completing the project successfully.
Responsibilities
In either quarter, everyone has certain key responsibilities:
- Clients: must communicate clearly and effectively their vision, manage the development process, evaluate intermediate products, and adapt goals accordingly.
- Developers: must rapidly come up to speed on the required development technologies, deliver the best product possible in the shortest time possible, and communicate clearly and effectively development progress and issues.
- Faculty: must help both of you learn to do these tasks better.
Important note for teams with NUvention Web clients: The NUvention Web team is responsible for their primary Minimum Viable Product (MVP). You are not to help on that. Instead, you will be responsible for an add-on module for their MVP. This might be a related product for a different user group, a module for some complementary function, such as analytics, or whatever.