Franske ITC-2900 Assignments

Statement of Work

After your team has selected a project to work on your next objective is to develop a Statement of Work (SoW). The SoW is your opportunity to take the very high level description of the project you were given and turn it into a more detailed description of your specific goals, operational procedures and timeline for the project. In order to successfully do this you will need to meet with the sponsor of the project and any other involved or related parties. One way to think of the SoW is as part of the contract you, as a consulting team, have with the project sponsor and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Goals for the SoW:

Clearly define the purpose of the project / problem statement in your own words. Make sure that you understand what is important to the sponsor.
Give an overview/background of the technology involved. Make sure you have a basic understanding of the concepts you will be investigating and the problems you might encounter. Show that you have already started background research on the project.
Define the scope of work. What will you need to do for the project sponsor to consider this a success?
Describe any resources or cooperation you believe you will need in order to be successful
Develop a plan/schedule for your project, this can be updated as needed but you need to know when you are going to try and have certain phases of the project complete

SoWs should be written in a narrative (paragraph) format (with the exception of a timeline) and should typically be about three or four pages single spaced. Your SoW will be graded based on how you meet the goals for the SoW listed above as well as professionalism (grammar, punctuation, etc.)

Google "statement of work" for more information about these as well as some examples.

Project Work Log

Each INDIVIDUAL in your group must keep a work log indicating what was worked on, when, and for how long. This should be written in narrative (paragraph) format. It must be turned in at the end of the course but must be kept up to date throughout the course. Your instructor may ask to see a copy of your work log at any time.
You should also keep a separate log of the hours you INDIVIDUALLY worked on the project in a spreadsheet by date so that they can be graphed.

Progress Updates

Your group must provide weekly updates to the instructor on the progress of your group, these can be meetings or written updates
- Written updates should be approved by the team before submitting to the instructor
- Written updates sent to the instructor should be copied to all team members and
At least once every two weeks you must have a meeting with the instructor where your progress is discussed
- Not all team members must attend this meeting but it is to your advantage to have as many as possible attend
- Meetings may be held over the phone, by web conference, or in person

Presentations

Your team will be presenting twice in this course.

Preliminary Results

You will have a preliminary results presentation a couple weeks before your final presentation where you will be presenting broad information about what you did to an interested audience. These presentations will be about 15 minutes long and are similar to your final presentation but typically will not include final results/conclusions which you may still be working on at the time.

The date and location of this presentation are to be determined and the presentation may take place in a web conference environment. This presentation will be worth 10% of your overall presentation grade and grading will be focused on professionalism, presentation skills, and adequate preparation.

Final Presentation

At the end of the class you will give a final presentation of about 20 minutes to an audience including other ITC students, faculty members, college administration, advisory board members, and employers. You should be prepared to discuss the background of your problem, the methodology you used, your testing, results, and conclusions. At the end of your presentation you should be prepared for a few minutes of Q&A from the audience as well. A copy of your presentation in electronic format must also be provided to the instructor.

Grading

Preliminary results presentation: 10% of presentation category, graded by instructor
Final presentation: 80% of presentation category, graded by instructor
Final presentation audience evaluations: 10% of presentation category, graded by audience members

Final Written Report

At the end of your project you must compile all your work into a technical whitepaper and submit it in paper and electronic format to the instructor. These whitepapers are typically 75-100 pages in length and include:

Table of Contents - Help people find the parts they're interested in
Executive Summary - Provide a summary of about two pages giving the highlights of everything else in the whitepaper, especially method, results, and conclusions. This should make someone interested in this topic want to read your entire whitepaper or help them find what they're interested in specifically. Hint: Write this after you finish the rest of it
Thank you's/dedications/etc.
Statement of Work - Possibly modified and updated as needed. Introduce and explain the problem/project and how you are going about it
Background/Research - What technologies did you look at? What important concepts are there to understand about this topic? Think of this part as a traditional research paper you might write for a composition course.
Methodology - how did you build your test environment, how did you do your testing, what criteria were you evaluating and why (hint, your research should tell you what criteria is important and how to measure it), lots and lots of documentation so that someone else reading this could duplicate your results
Results - What did you find when you ran your tests. No opinions here, don't analyze the data, just provide it
Conclusions/Analysis - Provide your opinions here and back them up with the results you gathered
Appendices - Include any critical technical documentation of your configurations, special/detailed setup instructions for tricky things, etc. in appendices at the end of the whitepaper.

Participation and Peer Evaluation

At the end of the course you will be asked to evaluate how well each person on your team contributed to the effort. Do not let these evaluations be a surprise! If you are having problems with team members you should talk to them about it first and if things do not involve make sure the instructor is aware of it well before the end of the course.