SWOT you say? | Capstone – Final Quarter

I’d like to bring up some highlights of the online Capstone course (CS467) during the Fall of 2023.

Strengths

Great introduction in the post-bacc program to working with a larger team than just a partner project.
Strong outcome of the course for students is strong communication skills. Without communicating well during the project, then the entire team’s progress tends to suffer.
Tons of great project ideas. The hardest question for newcomers coming into the Software Development field is “what should I build”. So the fact that there are lots of interesting projects, and even projects that where you could be working with industry/sponsor code base is even better.

Weaknesses

Accountability of others for completing tasks. No negative benefit of not completing tasks, other than project goals becomes further delayed.
I found out mid way through the course about the Vertically Integrated Program (VIP) which I would have been a lot interested in. Maybe that should be better advertised somewhere within the first week so that gives time for those interested/accepted to drop in/out of the course?

Opportunities

Mandatory live quarter check in with the team. Was thinking it’d be a good idea to have a live session with the team to gauge the overall process/progress of the team in a synchronous environment rather than asynchronously. It also allows the team to engage with the professor/teaching assistants.
Someone could make an application to help with recruiting teammates for this course. The information would be “live” in a sense that you can add POST yourself, project preferences, contact (email, discord, etc.) and skill set. Then later people can PUT or update their own status on if they found a group or not, or otherwise delete their “looking for group” entry. The “looking for team” board would also be searchable and can be filtered on.
Enforce project management. Initially tried to do sprints, however that died off after a few weeks. This could be a learning opportunity for those wanting to land a job in the industry to be familiar with scrum, agile, and keeping tallies on the expected work to be completed.

Threats