Module 1: Problem definition and project charter

Theme

Problem definition and project charter

Essential Question

What problem will the capstone solve, and for whom?

Module Components

• Book prose: conceptual framing, domain scenario, methods, and failure modes

• Assignment: evidence-backed production of a specific artifact

• Slides: presentation sequence for seminar or lecture delivery

• Narration: spoken version of the slide flow

• Rubric: criteria for evaluating the module artifact

• Notebook: executable lab aligned with the module theme using synthetic milestone evidence covering scope, implementation, evaluation, deployment readiness, and stakeholder value

Module Artifact

capstone portfolio with thesis, implementation evidence, evaluation report, and final defense materials focused on problem definition and project charter: Produce a project charter with scope and success criteria.

Professional Setting

Students work as if advising a capstone review committee evaluating whether a student project is defensible, deployable, and well documented. Their work must be intelligible to faculty advisor, industry sponsor, technical reviewer, and presentation panel.

Use This Module in Order

1. Read the learning chapter.

2. Review the slide deck with the matching narration.

3. In Populi, open the private student-repository link for this course and enter modules/module-1.

4. Clone the repository once or open its Codespace/Colab copy; run lab.ipynb and complete exercise.ipynb there.

5. Self-check with the rubric, commit and push the work, then submit exactly what Populi requests.