Assignment 0: Project preferences

Due

Friday, August 27^th by 8:00am

I will endeavor to finish matchmaking by the start of class Friday; in any case, I will post matches to the website as soon as possible.

Context

After watching the client pitches and reviewing the project details as necessary, you and your team need to decide what projects you prefer. I will use these preferences to assign teams to projects. Once assignments are made, you and your client are stuck with each other for the semester!

Some of you may have a stronger preference about who you are teamed up with than you do about the client or project. You will have the opportunity to indicate that.

This semester, 7 out of 30 projects invited to pitch have concerns about intellectual property or confidential information. For those projects, students will be asked to sign some forms agreeing to confidentiality and assignment of intellectual property. (This tends to be more important for companies than individuals.) You will have the opportunity to indicate whether your entire team is comfortable with this, or not, and you will not be penalized in any way for saying you’re not comfortable. If you have questions about any of this, feel free to contact Peter Liao of the UNC Office of Technology Commercialization (who spoke briefly on this topic on the second day of class) at liaopb@unc.edu.

Requirements

First, indicate whether you prefer to prioritize your teammate preferences or your project preferences. I will do my best to take all of your preferences, and especially this one, into account. In either case, you may (and are encouraged to) include both sets of preferences.

To indicate your preferences, your team should collectively send an email to me at terrell@cs.unc.edu. (That is, send one email per team, not per person.) For now, it’s OK if you’re a team of 1. The email should:

be sent from one team member;
copy the other team members, if any (max: 2^*);
include a list of 10 letters, which indicate your project preferences in order (for example, “A B C D E F G H I J” would indicate that project A is your first preference, project B is your second, etc.);
mention any important constraints (e.g. 2 of 4 team members do not have Macs so cannot easily develop an iOS app) or strong preferences not to work on certain projects (which I will do my best to accommodate but cannot guarantee); and
indicate whether you are comfortable with an IP assignment and confidentiality agreement
include the names of your preferred teammates (max: 2^*).

Here is a template for your email. Substitute anything in [brackets] with your answer.

I/we prefer to prioritize the [team/project] preferences.

My/our project preferences are: [list of 10 letters]

Am I/Are we comfortable with an IP assignment and confidentiality agreement? [yes or no]

My/our preferred teammates are: ["none" or list of 1-2 names]

^* Some of you already have a team of 4 in mind. You may submit the 4-person team, but please be aware that, depending on how the numbers work out, I may break up the team.

Please don’t drop the class after submitting this assignment!

Grade

There is no grade for this. However, if you do not submit your preferences (or submit them late), I will pick a project for you.

Hints

There are many ways to rate project ideas. Here are some of them. Different people weigh these aspects differently. It might be worthwhile to discuss with your team, if you have one, what the most important aspects are to each of you.

clarity of the proposal
maturity of the idea (e.g. are there UI designs already?)
client flexibility (if you can’t deliver all that they want or discover that what they are asking for isn’t very feasible from a technology perspective, will they roll with the punches and still be easy to work with?)
social impact of the project
connections of the client (e.g. can the client hire you after graduation if they like your work?)
impressiveness of the project for your portfolio and interviews
what languages, tools, and technologies might you be able to use or learn?
client friendliness
client availability (especially important for busy teams)