Fall Quarter

The fall quarter of senior design is where teams must nail down requirements, investigate technologies (including prototyping high risk components), and design a product that meets the requirements. The fall quarter consists of multiple phases, each with an associated milestone. Each team must develop a detailed cycle plan that will be part of the final project proposal. This plan should consist of one milestone for each phase and multiple cases associated with each milestone. A broad overview of the fall quarter is shown graphically below:

Each team will be evaluated on the process they use and the deliverables they produce. The process used is documented through:

• FogBugz via case management:
  • appropriate creation,
  • timely completion, and
  • useful notes within)
• FogBugz Wiki Status Reports (due midnight prior to meeting with advisor in all but the first and last week of the quarter)
• Kiln usage:
  • substantive contributions from all team members
  • useful commit logs

The deliverables typically consist of:

• Project Proposal (final draft including detailed cycle plan)
• Uses Cases
• Software and/or Hardware Requirements Specification
• Prototype(s) of high risk component(s)
• Technology Investigation Report
• Software and/or Hardware Design
• Cycle I Report (includes detailed plan for Cycle II)
• Presentation
• Peer Evaluation

See this page for due dates for certain items. The due dates for the remaining items are set by the due dates associated with each milestone in the detailed cycle plan.

See this page for joint meeting times for the fall quarter.

In general, each team will meet with their advisor for one hour a week. The time of this meeting must be arranged before the beginning of the quarter. The time of this meeting does not need to be during the normally scheduled senior design class time.

Each team is encouraged to establish an additional weekly meeting time. While there may be some weeks where meeting is not necessary, having an established time will be convenient for when meetings are necessary. You are encouraged to keep meeting minutes. FogBugz is an ideal place to keep these minutes. When discussing a particular case, comments may be added to the case to provide a record of what was discussed regarding that case. The FogBugz wiki is another convenient place to store meeting minutes.