The projects page provides short descriptions of software-development projects that, in my opinion, are feasible for teams of between four and eight student programmers working part time for approximately ten weeks.
The principal goals of this writing assignment are to develop those short descriptions into software specifications by working up more specific requirements statements for them, to substantiate or refute my opinion about their feasibility, and to select appropriate elements of a software-development methodology appropriate to such a project, providing justifications for one's selections.
The assignment is to choose one of the projects and to write a two-part document, possibly cast in the form of an expository essay or report, in which the first part develops a specification for the project and assesses its feasibility and the second argues for some selection of elements of a software-development methodology appropriate to that methodology.
The length of these documents is not very important, but I would be surprised if you could complete the assignment in fewer than about 700 words, or if you could not complete it in fewer than about 4000.
This assignment will require some research. The links that I provided on the projects page may get you started, but are unlikely to answer all of your questions. Include a list of your sources at the end of your document.
You may work either singly or collaboratively on this assignment, provided that all the members of a collaboration address the same proposed project.
I prefer to receive papers as plain text files, in Open Document text format (.odt), or as plain TeX or LaTeX source files (.tex). I do not accept non-standard proprietary formats such as Microsoft Office (.doc, .docx).
To submit your paper, if it is a single file, attach it to an e-mail message to stone@cs.grinnell.edu with the subject line “CSC 323: Writing assignment #1”. (If it is in several files, put them in a tarball and attach the tarball instead.)
This assignment is due on Friday, February 17.