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Project Mechanics

Forming Teams

The project is to be done in teams of one to five. The assignments will be the same for any size team. Groups of five will have less coding to do per person but will also have to manage the interactions between more people.

Although it is discouraged, you may change groups between assignments by talking the TAs.

Group Evaluations

In order to encourage every member of the team to contribute equally, you will submit a group evaluation form after each phase of the project. Each of you is required to individually submit a form with a quantitative assessment of the relative contributions of each of your teammates, excluding yourself. You have 100 points to allocate among your teammates, proportional to how much they contributed to just this assignment.

It is our expectation that for most groups, all of your teammates will pull their weight, and so you will be able to simply give equal points to each member. But if you have as teammates, Sam Slacker, Annie Average, Hugh Helpful, and Connie Conscientious, for example, then you might allocate your 100 points as follows:

Annie Average 25
Sam Slacker 10
Hugh Helpful 32
Connie Conscientious 33

If on the next assignment Sam starts pulling his weight, you should reflect his new performance (and not his past record) in the assessment for that assignment. We will use this information in determining final grades. By the way, many engineering companies use peer review to determine annual raises, and so making your peers think you are useful is a good skill to have.

Late Policy

Project due dates and times are as indicated on the web site unless announced (generally at 15:45). Initial design documents are a week before code is due and final design documents are due two days after you turn in your code (i.e. the due date + slip days).

Don't be late! Nevertheless we understand that things will come up so we will use flexible slip dates for the implementation assignments, which are also always due at 15:45. Each team is given an automatic extension of 5 calendar days. You can use the extension on any assignment during the semester (in increments that are rounded up to the nearest integer). For instance, you can hand in one assignment 5 days late, or each of five assignments 1 day late. For project assignments, the slip time will be deducted from each team member's dates. This should let you schedule due dates around the due dates for other courses. No assignment will be accepted more than 5 days late.

After you have used up your slip time, any assignment handed in late will be marked off 10% (linearly) per day. Extensions will not be granted. Instead of using slip days you may also opt to have late assignments marked off 10% per day, to "save" the slip days.