I. If you are a BSE student and are thus registered in both SE463 and SE490 this term, then your SE463 specification group's term project is to write a requirements specification for the capstone system being prototyped by your SE490 design team. This specification group and design team share
1. unique identifying number, a number from 1 to 59;
2. identifying name;
3. list of members;
4. abstract summarizing the system under specification or design; and
5. mentoring TA;
II. If you are not a BSE student and are thus registered in SE463 but not SE490 this term and you are a student in another engineering and thus doing a capstone project in the other engineering, then you and anyone else in SE463 this term that is doing the same capstone project form a separate SE463 specification group, its term project is to write a requirements specification for the system being prototyped in the capstone project. This specification group will have a
1. unique identifying number, a number greater than or equal to 60;
2. identifying name;
3. list of members, possibly only one;
4. abstract summarizing the system under specification or design; and
5. mentoring TA;
III. If you are not a BSE student and are thus registered in SE463 but not SE490 this term and you are a CS student, then if you are developing or want to develop a system, possibly in a CS capstone, then you and anyone else in SE463 this term that is doing the same development project form a separate SE463 specification group, and its term project is to write a requirements specification for the system being prototyped in the capstone project. This specification group will have a
1. unique identifying number, a number greater than or equal to 60;
2. identifying name;
3. list of members, possibly only one;
4. abstract summarizing the system under specification or design; and
5. mentoring TA;
IV. If you are not a BSE student and are thus registered in SE463 but not SE490 this term and you are a CS student, then if you are not doing any development, i.e., do not meet condition III, then find a group that wants a smart ignoramus to provide out-of-the-box thinking and join it as its smart ignoramus.
If you meet none of the conditions I through IV above, then speak immediately with the course prof about what your term project will be.
The profs of SE463 and SE490 need from each group or team in SE43 and SE490 Items 2--4, its
2. identifying name,
3. list of members, and
4. abstract summarizing the system under specification or design by the hard deadline of Wednesday 16 September at 5:00pm, so that they may assign to the group or teami its Item 1, its unique identifying number, and its Item 5, its TA, well in advance of its first deliverables in SE463 and SE490. If your team or group fail to provide this information by the deadline, then each member of the team or group will lose 5% from er final SE490 and SE463 grades per 24 hours late. The reason we are being so hard nosed about this deadline is that we cannot properly and equitably assign groups and teams to the TAs without this information for every group and team. We want each TA to have about the same work load and to be assigned only groups and teams that E is competent and motivated to ment ("ment" is the invented verb for what a mentor does).
In the above, a list of members consists of a .csv file with one line per member in the format:
studentNumber,lastName,firstName,username
A username is known also as a watIam ID.
If you meet Condition I, then in SE490, you will be instructed by the SE490 prof to provide this information at your team's gitHub. You need to do no more. The SE490 prof will share this information with the SE463 prof.
If you meet Condition II or III, then one member of your group needs to submit to the dropbox for Deliverable 0, Creation of Specification Groups at the site for SE 463 - Fall 2026 at learn.uwaterloo.ca, a .csv file containing a list of group members and a .pdf file containing an abstract describing the system that the group is specifying.
The abstract is a not-more-than-one-page elevator pitch that tells a potential investor enough detail about the use of the features of your capstone project that E can decide whether to invest.
If you meet Condition II or III, then the abstract must be submitted in PDF format. If you meet Condition I, then follow the instructions specified by the SE490 prof.
Many an SE490 or other capstone team will already have an abstract from before. In that case, use it; if you want to update it, then please do so!
If you don't have an abstract for whatever reason, then make one up. It doesn't matter that it will change, because, the abstract is the basis for the first three SE463 deliverables. Historically, what is learned doing these first deliverables ends up causing changes to the abstract.