Project description and milestones

Project groups with 4-5 members will be formed by the instructors, with the goal of mixing people with distinct background and perspectives. Much of the value of the project will be what you learn from working with other group members.

Project description

The purpose behind the project is to gain experience in applying the concepts of the course to real-life situations. Your project group will choose a significant application of interest to you. You will then apply your skills in:

Conceptualizing what a networked application can do. Note, the important point is not to just automate existing processes, but rather think creatively about how the processes could be reorganized to take maximum advantage of networked applications. This may mean reorganization of human organizations, major changes to the customer interfaces, etc.
Analysis of the application. What are the important application requirements -- functional and performance? In the course of doing this, try to talk to people already engaged in this application (for this reason, applications on campus are particularly appropriate).
Technology supporting the application.

The outcome of the project will be a group-authored Web site that documents the conclusions of the group and which will be assigned as reading for all the students.

Grading criteria [top]

How compelling is your application? How much impact will network computing make on cost, quality, functionality, etc.within the context of the user group or user organization?
How innovative is your organization or reorganization of the application processes to take maximum advantage of networked computing? Is your application significantly different from existing commercial applications? Have you achieved major advantage through the use of networked computing?
How well have you determined the requirements of the application?
Have you developed a good acquisition approach and technological solution, such that good cost/performance characteristics will be obtained?

In addition, you should take the following into account in formulating your project:

It is important to consider how you can add value to all participants in the application. This includes organizations as well as individuals. This is important to justify the expense of developing an application, and also expands opportunities.
Don't just automate what currently happens, but rethink the processes to make them much more effective by leveraging networked applications. Again, think about how to reorganize all aspects of the process, individual and organizational.
Make sure your application is well differentiated from what already exists. Investigate existing applications that may overlap yours, and make sure you are different. Avoid applications where there is already significant commercial activity unless you have good ideas about how to do significantly better.
Be innovative! Use your imagination to come up with new ideas on how the context of your application can be made better.

Milestone 3 is the capstone of the first three milestones, and 50% of the project grade will be based on it. (The first two milestones served as a vehicle to give you direction and guidance.) The weighting of the subsequent milestones are shown below:

M3                50%
M4                15%
M5                10%
M6                25%

In addition, 30% of the project grade will be based on an assessment of your group members as to your personal contribution to the group. More specifically, the following is the formula governing the project grade assuming each milestone M and your particpation P are all graded on a scale of 4 (4 = A, 3 = B, 2 = C, 1 = D, 0 = F):

Project grade (range of 0 to 4) = (0.5*M3 + 0.15*M4 + 0.1*M5 + 0.25*M6) * (0.7 + 0.3*P/4)

Milestone one [top]

Create a homepage for your group. Your homepage should be arranged with an entry page that contains a title and abstract for the project, a list of group members, and links to each of the milestones.

Choose the application your group would like to address. We want each of the project groups to choose different applications, and it is also important that the application be of a complexity and scale that does not exceed the intentions of this project. For these reasons, get approval for your application from the instructor. For the purposes of approval, the title and abstract will be sufficient -- the instructors will ask additional questions if necessary.

Here are some examples to illustrate the type of applications you might choose:

Reorganize and automate the student admissions and record keeping process at UC Berkeley
Reorganize and automate food services and campus retail organizations at UC Berkeley
Organize and automate a remote learning operation for UC Extension
Organize and automate a remote learning operation for UC campuses to share classes
Organize and automate an outreach program from UC Berkeley to secondary schools
Other ideas welcome, including those not at the University.....

Think carefully about finding an application where networked computing adds major value, since you will be judged in part on how much impact you potentially make on users and organizations.

Your submission should include:

Subj: Group xx project milestone 1 (only if sent by email -- see below)
Your group number.
List of students in the group who have participated in the discussions.
List of email addresses of students in the group.
Concise description of the proposed application. This will be only one to three paragraphs long, and state what is intended to accomplish and how you believe this is a compelling application of networked computing.

You can submit milestone 1 one of several ways:

(Preferred) Author an html page and post on the class web site under "groups and projects". In this case send a notification by email that the web page has been posted.
Author an html page and attach to an email message.
Send as ascii within an email message.
Please do not send attached Word files. (You can author in Word and save as an html file if you like.)

The purpose of this milestone is to get your group moving in a profitable direction. In many cases there will be some discussion with the instructor and resubmissions before the milestone is completed.

Milestone two [top]

On your group homepage, concisely write up the following (this will probably amount to at most two to three pages):

What is the scope of the application? What users and/or organizations will be served, and what will they be able to accomplish?
What general application capabilities discussed in class ought to be applicable to this application (social, information management, business, etc. -- be specific)?
What innovative new capabilities can you include that are not available to users today?
In general, make the case as to why you think the end users or user organization will derive major benefits from your new application.

Again, there might be some iteration with the instructors to refine your application ideas. They will give you guidance as to how you might improve your proposal, and your grade is based on the final outcome.

Milestone three [top]

In this phase, you will begin an analysis of your application in sufficient detail that the stakeholders (people who will pay to develop the application and who will have to use it in their operational setting) can examine and evaluate your plan and give you feedback. It is a good idea to talk to people who might actually use the application (if this is possible).

This first stage of analysis is functional requirements. Your analysis will include:

Goals. Describe the general goals of your application. What is the application context and what do you plan to do for this context? This will be an expansion and refinement of your second milestone.
Impact. If these functional requirements are met, what impact will your application make on the intended users? You need to sell this application to them, since they will have to use it and somebody will have to pay for it. Give your strongest pitch. What are all the specific functions that your application performs?
Scenarios. Give appropriate usage scenarios: What steps will users follow in making use of your application. Give as many scenarios as necessary to capture all the main capabilities of your application.

The following criteria will be specifically addressed in the grading:

(30%) Impact on cost, productivity, functionality, and quality in the application domain
(20%) Innovation rather than just automation of existing processes
(15%) Impact on all individuals and organizations
(15%) Originality
(10%) Organization and style
(10%) Completeness and detail

Milestone four [top]

Now you will continue your analysis to deal with the performance issues. Based on the application usage requirements, so that the users derive maximum value without budgeting more acquisition and deployment costs than necessary, analyze the following:

Performance objectives. What functions of your application are immediate and what is deferred? What quantitative objectives are required? What performance attributes are less critical? Justify your conclusions by making an argument (from a user perspective) as to why these objectives are necessary (since improving performance parameters will always increase the cost of development and deployment).
Scalability. What is the largest conceivable usage of your application if it is wildly successful, in terms of number of users, number of operations, or whatever parameters are relevant? This will give you guidance at the architectural phase.

Observe that here you are addressing the characteristics of your application and how it serves users, not the technology supporting the application. The requirements you identify then affect the design of the technology. In estimating these performance requirements you will have to make credible and supportable assumptions about your application: how many users might you have if you are most successful, what is the activity level of those users, and how do the details of what users are actually doing affect the requirements on factors like throughput and interactive delay. For a background on the issues you should be thinking about, see Section 17.1 and the first paragraph in Section 17.3 (remembering that this is about the technology, whereas you are interested in the needs of the users, with the goal of relating that to the requirements on the technology).

The following criteria will be specifically addressed in the grading of this milestone:

(22%) Realistic and accurate identification of performance attributes relevant to this application
(22%) Quantifiable estimation of how those attributes can be relaxed without affecting users
(22%) Realistic and accurate identification of scalability attributes relevant to this application
(22%) Quantifiable estimation of the scalability requirements of this application
(12%) Organization and style

Milestone five [top]

Address the issue of how your application might be acquired. In particular, consider the following issues and try to achieve closure on them:

Do you think your application is of sufficient interest that sales to multiple organizations might justify starting a company and developing this application as a software product? If so, what types of configurability and flexibility would be required to meet the differing needs of many customers?
Assuming your application won't be available as a product, discuss the merits of outsourced development vs. internal development for your application.

Your conclusions will depend very much on the context of your chosen application: its capabilities, and also the nature of the organizations that will use it. Justify your conclusions in the context of both the application you have chosen and the organizations involved.

The following criteria will be specifically addressed in grading this milestone:

(30%) Accurate and justified conclusion on the product opportunity for this application
(25%) Identification of dimensions of flexibility needed for a software product
(30%) Accurate and justified conclusion on outsourcing vs internal development
(15%) Organization and style

Milestone six [top]

Address some technology issues for your application. In particular:

Propose a host architecture (client-server, number of tiers, peer-to-peer, or whatever) and justify your choice.
What communication services would be most advantageous? Can you define any services that would be very useful in your particular application but which were not discussed in class or the reader?
Consider one instance where an application-level protocol needs to be defined for your application, and (for the practice) design and document that protocol. Choose one that will stretch you a bit, not a trivial example.
Consider the availability and security issues for your application. What security capabilities (authentication, confidentiality, integrity, non-repudication, etc.) do you believe are necessary, and where and how would they be used in your application? Would you use certificates, and if so who would be the CA? How would secret keys be managed?

The following criteria will be specifically addressed in grading this milestone:

(15%) Choice of a host architecture and justification
(20%) Appropriate choice of communcation services and justification
(25%) Well-designed application protocol
(25%) Appropriate coverage of security issues
(15%) Organization and style