RMIT BIS Capstone Software Projects

As part of the Bachelor of Business, Business Information Systems degree at RMIT, the students do a final year Capstone subject. The students are grouped into teams of 6 and are required to specify, design and implement an information system. The goal is that the students develop a real project for a real client and experience the entire software development life cycle.

If you, your company, or your organisation would like to consider having a software project undertaken for free, please contact me, Vince Bruno: vince.bruno@rmit.edu.au. Please take the time to read the following project guidelines.

Guidelines for Potential Projects

Small Projects

In a 16 week period, the students are expected to specify, analyse, design, build and test the information system they have been assigned. Given that the students are also doing other subjects and are not experienced professionals, the projects we give them must be small.

Where a project looks like it will be too big, we may need to reduce the scope to bring the project down to a reasonable size. This flexibility would be required from the client and should be understood from the outset.

Non Mission Critical

We cannot guarantee that the project will be successful. Most teams put in a lot of effort and come up with very good systems. For various reasons, however, some teams may not be able to complete the project or get everything working. This is all part of the learning process they are going through.

As a consequence, we do not want mission critical systems that the client would be relying on for their operations. The projects we give to students must be of an ‘optional’ nature – there will not be major ramifications to the client if the project fails.

Time frame – 16 weeks

The students do the subject during a standard semester. Therefore, the projects must run for 16 weeks from start to finish – including requirements gathering. Any projects we undertake must be of a size and nature that they can be completed in 16 weeks.

Project dates – March to June and August to November

There are two semesters a year, so there are only two potential project periods. These are approximately March to June and August to November. Any potential project must be able to fit into these two periods in the year. Projects must start in the first week of March or the first week of August. We cannot start projects at any other time of the year.

Resource requirements

In general, clients are not expected to provide any physical resources to the students or RMIT for the project. The students work on the project in their own time and using their own equipment or that provided by the university on campus. It is also not expected that students would be provided office space or equipment at the client premises. Where the project is not ‘typical’ (eg: requires special hardware), the client would need to provide resources to help with the project.

Please note, however, that it is the client’s responsibility to provide whatever infrastructure is needed to run the system once it is completed.

Domain Expert

The primary resource the client needs to provide is one or more domain experts the students can communicate with. This is required to determine the requirements of the project and obtain feedback throughout the project. The domain expert(s) must be available for meetings with the students, especially in the first 4 weeks of the project. It is preferred that meetings are in person, in Melbourne, but we have conducted interstate projects, so this is also possible.

No support, no maintenance.

The only deliverables to the client at the end of the project are documentation and software code.

It is the client’s responsibility to provide the platform required and run the system. Neither the students nor RMIT can offer any sort of support or maintenance services.

Intellectual Property.

Intellectual property related to the project will reside with the client.