Project Part 1 – CS169

Assigned September 1, Due Wednesday, September 8

Write a 1-2 page project proposal: What software system you would like to build this semester, and why? You must find somebody who would be interested in using this software system (try a local business, a campus office; friends, family are also acceptable but we prefer a customer with which you have a business relationship). The customer will help refine the specifications, will provide feedback (to you) over the course of the project and will do acceptance test at the end, will reject compromises that might otherwise seem reasonable to you, and will help you prioritize the features.

Your proposal should include:

· a description of what problem the system would solve and why this problem is important;

· who is your customer;

· a description of what the system would do;

· a brief (one paragraph) justification that the proposal is neither too easy nor too ambitious for 5-7 programmers to undertake in one semester (total programming and testing time is about 7 weeks, preceded by about 4 weeks of specification, design and planning).

Your proposal should not include a discussion of how the system would accomplish its task. You should describe the “what” and the “why”, not the how, in this assignment.

We will pre-select among the proposals a few that we think are more carefully thought out, and are likely to generate more interest. In the next assignment, we will publish the pre-selected proposals (without names of the proposers) and will ask everybody to rank their favorites, along with the programming experience. We will then make the team assignments based on this information. Only about 10 of the pre-selected proposals will be selected in the next stage. If not enough students rank your proposal highly, you might be assigned to another project. If your proposal is one of those selected, we guarantee that you will be part of the team.

We will work out a scheme of bonus points for the pre-selected and especially the selected proposals.

This assignment is to be turned in by email to cs169@cs.berkeley.edu by 5p.m. on Wednesday, September 8. Assignments will be recognized automatically. Thus, to ensure that you get credit for your assignment, you must adhere to the following format:

Subject Line: proj1

The body of the message must start with two lines, as follows:

Name: Your Name

SID: Your Student ID Number (no blanks and no # symbol, just digits)

For example, a valid start to a message body would be:

Name: John Smith

SID: 123456789

I propose to . . .

Your proposal should be written in plain ASCII text.