https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/index.html Overview The course project for Winter 2026 is a collection of requirements and specification deliverables, including a final Software Requirements Specification (SRS), for a project of your choosing that is hypothetically to be developed by another team. Your team will choose a real-world problem that you think can be addressed or mitigated by software. I encourage you to use this course project as an opportunity to think about how software can be used to improve people’s lives (e.g., improve mental health and happiness, reduce waste and share resources, combat climate change, promote equity and inclusion, etc.). If you are looking for ideas, consider something related to the UN sustainable development goals. Another source of ideas are SE Capstone projects (here and here), but your team needs to find its own problem to tackle. Hugo en-us https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/topic/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/topic/index.html Each project team will choose their own topic. Your project topic needs to be rich enough to support three substantial use cases. For example, use cases of WaterlooWorks might be (1) Obtain a Job, (2) Hire a co-op student, and (3) Match Students and Employers. As another example, use cases for an app on Accessibility Problems might be (1) Report a Problem, (2) Respond to a Problem, and (3) View Problems on a Map. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/teamwork/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/teamwork/index.html Software engineering is a team activity, and the success of your project will depend on your dedication towards teamwork. There will be materials and activities that aim to help you and your teammates gel as a team and to monitor the health of the team. Moreover, a significant portion of your course grade will depend on your attendance at team meetings and contributing your fair share of the work on your team’s deliverables. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/peer_eval/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/peer_eval/index.html Peer evaluations are submitted by the out-going team leader when leadership changes. See Teamwork for more details. Submit peer evaluations named «TeamName»_peer_eval.pdf to the appropriate LEARN dropbox. A peer evaluation consists of a paragraph on the contributions of each team member. Try to be as objective as you can. Did they attend all team meetings? Were they on time for the meetings? Did they watch the week’s lecture videos and complete their reflective readings (if any) in advance of the meeting? Was their work done on schedule/as promised/with due diligence? Did they take on a leadership and/or organizational role? Were they easy to work with? Did their work require extra checking by the rest of the group? Did they stay late when extra effort was required? Be sure to evaluate yourself as well. Be as honest as you can. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/deliverables/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/deliverables/index.html Weekly deliverables are due on Mondays at 8:59pm. The weekly deliverables that you produce during the term will contribute to the final deliverable: a Software Requirements Specification that describes a software solution to your team’s problem, in sufficient detail that it can be developed by another team. Each week’s deliverables will be described in detail on the Schedule page. Here is a calendar showing the due dates of all course deliverables. Yellow highlighted deliverables in the calendar are those that involve consultations with project stakeholders, and cyan highlighted deliverables are those that involve activities with buddy teams. Be sure to plan in advance so that you have sufficient time to schedule and conduct these interviews and analyze their results. https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/srs/index.html Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000 https://student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs445/Winter2026/project/srs/index.html The Software Requirements Specification (SRS) is the final product of this course. It is the outcome: of your team’s progression from an idea for a project; to seeking the users’ requirements and their feedback on your ideas; to devising the software requirements (only) of a potential solution to the users’ key problems and requirements; to documenting your software requirements insufficient detail for others to understand, to design and develop a product or test plan from, or to certify. The SRS video describes the purpose, content, and format of each of the sections of the SRS. The video is based on the ISO/IEC/IEEE International Standard on Requirements Engineering. Many of the sections will include updated artifacts that you have been developing all term, specifically: