Background
Finding an advisor
Writing Your Proposal
In order to graduate with your MSSE degree, you will need to complete your independent "Plan B" project, sometimes referred to as a "Capstone" project. Here you will find details on choosing a project, choosing an advisor, writing your proposal, setting up your oral exam, and completing the process.
The goal of the Plan B project is to demonstrate fluency with the tools of scholarship and professional practice in your field, an ability to independently plan and carry out a non-trivial piece of work, and an ability to present your work in written and oral formats.
The Plan B project counts for 3 credits in the program, it is graded pass/fail, and is expected to require at least 120 hours of effort per person. The policy in MSSE is that if a student selects a topic that requires a substantial technology-related learning curve, (such as learning a new language or operating system, etc.), then that portion of the effort is over and above the effort expected for the Plan B project itself.
Your Plan B project can take many forms, depending on your interests. It must be educational, have a research component, and relate to the Software Engineering program. It should also have a clear focus and well-defined success criteria. Here are some examples of past MSSE Plan B projects:
- Technology analysis: Analyze and compare competing approaches or products relative to some application or class of problems. One team of two compared Microsoft .NET and Sun J2EE with respect to a class of web-enabled enterprise applications.
- Software design and implementation: Analyze a problem, research known solutions and products that address the problem, develop a design and a plan, choose some interesting or challenging portion of the problem to implement and test. A recent graduate implemented an agent communication layer for a multiplayer FPS game. Another developed a distributed build manager that allows a build to depend on remote external libraries.
- Process assessment and improvement: Evaluate and document the current state of practice in an organization, identify problem areas and potential improvements, develop and document an improvement plan. One recent project analyzed a series of project failures and identified organizational factors related to misalignment between knowledge, motivation, and authority among technical teams and the user organization.
The MSSE Program Office maintains a file of past Plan B projects to inspire you and to help you get a better feel for what's expected.
You can find the MSSE Graduate Faculty roster, and you can determine which graduate faculties a professor is a member of, at the Grad School faculty roster site. Our program is called "Software Engineering - Twin Cities."
There are two approaches to finding an advisor: (1) based on research interests and knowledge relevant to your project area, and (2) based on desire to work with a particular faculty member. If you want to work in an area and don't know where to look to find someone who can help you, you can visit the research pages of the University's academic departments, or you can ask one of your professors or your DGS for help.
Your "official" advisor must be a member of the MSSE graduate faculty. If you want to work primarily with some other faculty member, you will need to work with the DGS to set up a co-advisor arrangement.
Your written proposal must include the following elements. It may be submitted by email as long as you avoid proprietary document formats.
- Project title.
- Problem description - what is the problem, why is it interesting?
- Brief outline of known related work.
- How you propose to solve or address the problem.
- A brief project plan, including at least one intermediate milestone with a date and deliverable.
- For group projects only, a brief description of how project responsibilities will be divided among team members.
- Evaluation or completion criteria - what do you want to be able to tell your committee when you are finished.
Ideally, the proposal will be just one page, two at the most. Save the verbiage for the report.
