Capstone Project Wiki

TLDR: Email your weekly status update to capstonereports@byu.edu. Include your team number in the subject line of the email. Your sponsor is your audience; speak to him/her/them. Address them by name. Include details about meaningful progress, technical roadblocks, and goals for the coming week, and attach any documentation (artifacts, photos, videos, etc) that support the week’s progress. Avoid meaningless updates like “spent the week working on Opportunity Development.”

All the details…

Regular communication with your sponsor is essential to the success of your project. In addition to (hopefully) weekly meetings/standups/check-ins with your sponsor, each Capstone team is required to send a weekly email to the sponsor.

Status updates should be addressed to and emailed directly to your sponsor, with copies to your coach and the Capstone office at capstonereports@byu.edu. The subject line for the email should be: “Team # Status Update <Date>” with # replaced by your team number and <Date> replaced by the date of the report. If you fail to include the team number and words “Status Update” in the subject line, you will likely not receive credit for the status update because it will probably get lost in the ocean of Capstone emails.

Weekly project status updates are due by 5:00 PM every Wednesday unless an alternate weekday is agreed upon in advance with your External Relations Manager. Teams can always send status updates in advance of the due date if that fits better with your team rhythm. This communication needs to make sense for how your team is working with your sponsor. Some teams might email an update in advance of a regularly scheduled meeting with the sponsor to prepare the sponsor for discussion points for the meeting. Other teams might choose to send an email update following the sponsor meeting to document take-aways and action items understood from the meeting. Do what makes sense for your team and situation.

Emailed Weekly Status Updates should:

• Be addressed directly to your sponsor (while these are read and graded by your External Relations Manager, your sponsor is your audience). Speak directly to him/her/them in a professional manner. What would you want to know if you were the project sponsor?
• Reflect the true status of the project. Do not attempt to hide intermittent failures in project progress. The sponsor can best help you when they have the full picture.
• Report on major accomplishments that are directly related to the project.
• Have appropriate documentation (either final or draft versions) attached that shows the progress being made on the design. Do not include superfluous attachments that do not support project progress. Sponsors do not need to see that you completed your shirt order form. But, if you include in your status update that you have completed a critical portion of a PCB design (for example), attach something showing that design. If you mention that you completed a CAD drawing of part of your system, attach a copy of the drawing. A github link (that works) or video of a working software module are also examples of appropriate documentation.
• Avoid inclusion of Capstone administrative tasks or classwork due dates that are not of interest to the sponsor. They don’t need to know that your team completed the purchasing quiz, for example.
• Be written in whatever format is most effective for your project and your sponsor; we recommend that you make them short, yet complete. Bulleted lists can work well in these reports.
• Be free from grammatical, spelling, and other mechanical errors.
• Use formal English (or another language, as appropriate) rather than reading like a quick text message
• Be helpful to the liaison in communicating with his or her supervisors.

Emailed Weekly Status Updates will likely:

• Report on the previous week's goals and the team’s progress toward meeting them.
• Present the goals for the coming week (some of which may be carried forward from the previous week).
• Contain a list of action items the team is focusing on for the coming week;
• Include requests of things you need from you sponsor – answers to questions, requests for information, items to be reviewed or approved, etc.

GRADING

Weekly status updates are graded on a 10-point scale. Your External Relations Manager grades the weekly status updates and views them from the point of view of your sponsor.

9-10: Status update is clear and communicates how the team has met the previous week's goals and mentions roadblocks/failures and plans to overcome those, clearly states the project goals for the coming week, includes supporting documentation in the format that makes sense for your project (documents, video demos, github links, etc). A review of key takeaways and action items should be listed if the status update is a follow-up to a meeting with the sponsor.

7-8: Status update mentions some pertinent updates but leaves the sponsor with questions about what the team has actually been doing. Documentation of progress does not makes sense for what is reported.

0-6: Status update focuses on meaningless Capstone deadlines and terminology and does not give the sponsor much indication of what has been done for the project (i.e. “Spent the week working on Concept Development”), does not include clear updates on project progress, seems hurried and an after-thought, or simply lacks useful information. Missing documentation that seems like it should have been included.

Pro Tip: If your External Relations Manager can't tell which project you're working on from reading your status update (disregarding the team number you've been sure to include in the subject line), you probably haven't included the best information in your update. Think about what you would want to know if you were the sponsor.