Term projects in this course will involve open ended studies of an open source project of your choice. You will use the concepts and techniques discussed during this course to analyze and/or improve the quality of an open source project. Note, this does not mean developing the functionality of the project. We are only examining quality concerns. All term projects must involve automated testing in some capacity. These projects should be conducted in groups of two to four members.
Before embarking on your project, your group must first create a proposal that outlines what you plan to do and how. A good strategy for creating a sufficient proposal would be to follow the outline for test plans discussed in class. For a group of size k, proposals should be 300*k words long. In addition to what you plan to do, how you intend to do it, and how you will measure the outcome, the proposal should list the open source project you intend to analyze and any additional tools or software that you tentatively intend to use to accomplish your goals. Note, your process and tools may change or develop as your project progresses, and your reasons for making such changes should be discussed in your final reports.
Proposals are due March 1 at 11:59 pm.
In addition to working in groups, you should be prepared to discuss your projects in class, including your goals, your ideas, and your progress. Just as with other class discussion, this will count toward your participation grade. In addition, you may find that sharing the difficulties and obstacles you encounter can lead to insights on how to better overcome such obstacles.
As a group, you should also write a final report. This report should examine the goals of your project, the techniques from this course that you used to accomplish your goals, the obstacles that you encountered as well as how you addressed them, how successful you were in your goals, and any other interesting or salient points that you wish to highlight.
For a group of size k, final reports should be 1500*k words long. Reports should also contain at least k figures.
In addition, each group member should submit a 250 word summary of their own contributions to the project.
Final reports are due April 7 at 11:59 pm.
These term projects are worth 30% of your total course grade.