Eight Weeks From Brief to Handoff

Accelerated Capstone Project

COACH

DR. MICHAEL LITMAN, PH.D.

Master Computer Scientist

Eight weeks is not enough time to discover what you want to build. It is exactly enough time to build something real — if you decide fast, write the requirements down once, and spend the rest of the term with your hands on the work.

START WEEK 1 SEE THE SYLLABUS
8
Weeks
160
Hours budgeted
12
Pre-scoped briefs
6
Milestones

The eight-week, accelerated edition of The Capstone Project. Same professional arc — inception, requirements, design, construction, verification, documentation, deployment, handoff — compressed into eight weeks and roughly 160 hours, about 20 a week. The compression is bought in one place: you do not spend a month hunting for an idea. Week 1 hands you a catalog of twelve pre-scoped project briefs, each with a real problem, a named user, a drafted starter requirement set, an identified hard part, and a technology stack already sized to the budget. You adopt one and adapt it — or bring your own and use a brief as the template — and you are writing requirements on day two instead of week four. By the end of Week 3 your specification is written and a walking skeleton is running in continuous integration. The remaining five weeks are yours to build, test, document, and hand off.

— SYLLABUS

Part One

Week 1
Ch 1 — Commit to a Project by Friday
Why an accelerated capstone is won or lost in Week 1; the seven hats and the compressed life cycle; choosing from the Fast-Start Catalog of pre-scoped briefs (or bringing your own and using a brief as the template); sizing honestly to 160 hours; and standing up the repository, board, and hours log on day one
P1Charter, Scoping Decision & Engineering System
Week 2
Ch 2 — Requirements at Speed
Adapting a brief's starter requirements instead of writing from a blank page; the anatomy of a functional requirement and its acceptance criteria; making non-functional requirements measurable in the same week rather than a later one; MoSCoW and the discipline of writing down what you will not build; traceability and a definition of done
P2Software Requirements Specification
Week 3
Ch 3 — Design, Decide, and Stand It Up
The week that buys the rest of the term: adopting or deviating from the brief's suggested stack and defending it in an architecture decision record; a technical specification sized to eight weeks; the work plan and risk register; and a walking skeleton running end to end under continuous integration before Week 4
P3Technical Specification, Decision Records & Walking Skeleton
Week 4
Ch 4 — The Design Review and the Halfway Truth
The formal review as industry practices it — roles, the walkthrough, logging defects instead of debating them — then freezing the specification into a baseline, running change control for everything after, and an honest halfway pace audit while there is still time to cut; the midterm checkpoint of the course
Design Review & Midterm Checkpoint

Part Two

Week 5
Ch 5 — Build the Core
The developer hat at full speed: vertical slices against the Must list, a per-task definition of done, reviewing your own code, AI-assisted implementation with real accountability, commit discipline under deadline pressure, and keeping the hours log honest in the week you are least inclined to
P5Core Increment & Demo
Week 6
Ch 6 — Test, Integrate, and Cut
Verification as a phase rather than an afterthought: the test plan, test cases traced to requirements, defect reporting and triage by severity and priority; then integration, performance against your own targets, a security pass, and the change control that decides honestly what ships and what does not
P6Tested Release Candidate, Defect Log & Change Log
Week 7
Ch 7 — Document, Deploy, and Hand It Off
The week that carries most of the grade: the README that gets a stranger running, the architecture overview, the runbook, the handoff guide, configuration and secrets, a scripted or containerized setup, the tagged release and its license — and the clean-machine test that proves any of it works
P7Documentation Set, Deployable Release & Handoff Package
Week 8
Ch 8 — Deliver
Closing the project: the final submission audited against the rubric from a clean clone, the tagged release and the repository link, a thirty-minute presentation that tells the truth about what did and did not get done, and the retrospective that turns eight compressed weeks into something you can carry into an interview
P8The Final Submission