Term Startup

Submission

Team, one confirmation per team

Due

Every term, end of week 1

Weight

No points; it does not change your grade

Fall adds two items: repository access, and any multi-team split.

In this assignment you will make contact with your project partner or mentor, hold or schedule your first meeting of the term, and confirm in Canvas that the checklist below is done. It carries no points. Your project partner completes 25% of your grade every term, and every item below is something a later graded deliverable assumes you settled in week 1.

Teams are announced in week 1 and your first meeting may land in week 2. Send the email in week 1 anyway: the meeting you are asking for has to be scheduled around somebody else’s calendar, and the Definition of Shipped, the week 5 checkpoint gate, and the approvals with lead times measured in weeks all start from this conversation.

The Checklist

Every term:

1. Intro email sent. Start from the introduction email template, which already carries the questions worth asking before you meet. Keep the Bcc: cs-46x-help@oregonstate.edu line; that is how staff know the contact happened, and it is the only evidence anyone asks you for.
2. First meeting held or scheduled, with a meeting cadence and a communication channel you both agreed. Your partner committed to about an hour a week, so agree what that hour is for.
3. Evaluations confirmed. Confirm with them that they are the person who completes your partner evaluations this term, and walk them through the facet lists on that page. They score you against those lists in week 6 and week 10, so a partner who has read them in week 1 is scoring you against something you both saw.
4. Outcome expectations discussed: what this project is for, what counts as delivered, and how ambitious the target is. You do not have to settle it in week 1. You do have to have started it, because you and your partner agree the outcome type and the target rung and record them in your Definition of Shipped.

Fall only:

5. Repository access settled. The default is that teaching staff have read access to your repository. Say so in this conversation. If your partner cannot allow it, tell your Teaching Assistant (TA) in week 1 and your checkpoints run as walkthroughs instead, for the same points.
6. If other teams are on this project, what your team owns: which interface, repository, or milestone, and how the teams talk to each other. Agree it with the partner rather than assuming it, and write it into your Definition of Shipped.

What You Submit

One short confirmation in Canvas: the date you emailed, the date of the first meeting or the date it is scheduled for, who attended, and your agreed cadence and channel. A few lines. Nobody grades the writing and there is no rubric.

Your TA check-in in fall week 2 uses this checklist as its agenda, so bring what you learned rather than a document about it.

Partner has not replied? Two documented attempts (email plus one other channel) and then tell your TA, which is the same rule the Definition of Shipped uses. A partner who goes quiet is a problem staff can solve in week 2 and cannot solve in week 9.

If your project is under NDA

Nothing in this checklist needs partner-confidential material. The Canvas confirmation states dates, attendance, and your cadence, which are not covered by an NDA. Item 5 is the conversation where you find out an NDA applies at all.

Activities That Prepare This

Map Your External Approvals for item 4, because its first step is asking your partner in this meeting what approvals the project needs and who files them, and those clocks run in weeks. Stakeholder Mapping when your partner is an organization rather than one person and you need to know who else has to say yes.

Browse planning and communication when these run out.