Term Startup

Team, one submission per team·Every term·1% of each term's grade

• Introduction EmailFall, Sunday of week 1·0.2%·Rubric
• Term StartupFall, Sunday of week 2; winter and spring, Sunday of week 1·0.8% fall, 1% winter, 1% spring·Rubric

Each term has its own list below.

Up to 48 hours late loses one rubric band on each criterion. After that it scores zero, unless you contacted the instructors before the deadline with a documented reason.

In this assignment your team starts the term with your project partner or mentor: you work through this term’s list below, then submit a short report of where each item stands. In fall the introduction email comes first, as a submission of its own. Your interactions with your project partner are 25% of your grade every term, and where your team has no partner, your mentor (sometimes an instructor) stands in. Every item on a list is something a later graded deliverable assumes you have started.

What to Do

Do everything on your term’s list by the deadline. When an item waits on an answer from your partner, asking is your part: report it as not done yet, with the date you asked.

Fall Week 1: Introduction Email

Teams are announced in the week 1 class session. By Sunday of week 1, send the introduction email to your project partner, or to your mentor where your team has no partner, with every teammate on Cc. Start from the introduction email template, which already carries the questions worth asking before you meet. Send it as soon as you know your team: the meeting you’re asking for has to fit somebody else’s calendar, and the Definition of Shipped, the week 5 checkpoint milestone, and any approval, such as the partner’s IT review, all start from this conversation.

If every teammate already meets with the person this email goes to, as when your team recruited the mentor for its own proposal or already works with the partner, don’t send the email: message your instructors at cs-46x-help@oregonstate.edu by Sunday of week 1, and the Introduction Email is excused. Fall item 1 of the status report is then done, with the date you last met. If even one teammate hasn’t met them yet, send the email, because it is that teammate’s introduction.

Fall (by Sunday of week 2)

1. Partner replied, or you told your TA after the two documented attempts the Definition of Shipped asks for. A partner who goes quiet is a problem the instruction team can solve in week 2 and can’t solve in week 9.
2. First meeting held or scheduled.
3. Meeting cadence and channel agreed. Your partner committed to about an hour a week, so agree what that hour is for.
4. Evaluator confirmed. Confirm with your partner that they are the person who completes your partner evaluations this term, and walk them through the facet lists on that page. They rate your team against those lists in week 6 and week 10.
5. Outcome conversation started: what this project is for, what counts as delivered, and how ambitious the target is. You don’t have to settle it now, because you and your partner agree what shipped means and record it in your Definition of Shipped later in the year.
6. Access requested. Ask your partner for everything the work needs that someone outside the team has to grant: the repositories, the data, accounts on the services you’ll build on, hardware, and documentation of how the existing system is hosted and maintained. If your project requires an IP agreement or an NDA, ask when you can sign it, because the rest may wait on it. Ask your partner how long each of these takes: the work stops where the first is missing. Hardware from the OSU inventory and AWS accounts come from the instruction team; Resources says how to request them and where the rest of OSU’s compute comes from. Ask, too, whether the instruction team may have read access to the repository: you submit PDFs, but a grader sometimes needs the repository itself to check what a PDF cites, such as the code, the PRs, and the CI runs. If not, tell your TA, and your repo checkpoints run as walkthroughs instead.
7. If other teams share your project, what your team owns: which interface, repository, or milestone, and how the teams talk to each other. Agree it with your partner rather than assuming it, and write it into your Definition of Shipped.
8. Production target agreed: ask your partner what “deployed” will mean at Repo Checkpoint 2 in fall week 10: where it runs, who owns the account or infrastructure, and whether it needs an approval. Also ask what applies: if you contribute to an open-source project, which maintainer reviews your first PR; if you run a pipeline on data, which sample data it may use and, if the real run happens on a single workstation, who outside the team will run it there. The answer goes into Repo Checkpoint 1 in week 5.

Your TA check-in in fall week 2 falls before this deadline. Bring the list as it stands: who has replied, what is scheduled, and what is stuck.

Winter (by Sunday of week 1)

1. First meeting of the term held or scheduled.
2. Cadence and channel: confirmed as they were, or the new ones.
3. Evaluator confirmed for this term. If the person changed, walk the new evaluator through the facet lists.
4. Definition of Shipped reviewed: your partner has seen your draft, or you have a date to review it together before it is due in week 3.

Spring (by Sunday of week 1)

1. First meeting of the term held or scheduled.
2. Cadence and channel: confirmed as they were, or the new ones.
3. Evaluator confirmed for this term. If the person changed, walk the new evaluator through the facet lists.
4. Release target and handoff recipient confirmed: what ships by the Release and Metrics deadline, and who receives the project at the Project Handoff, both in week 8.
5. Partner invited to the Engineering Expo in week 10.

What You Submit

Introduction Email

One PDF per team, printed from the sent message in your mail app. It shows the sent timestamp, From, To, the Cc line with every teammate, the subject, and the whole body. It needs no cover lines, since the headers carry the names. A reply is not required; fall item 1 of the status report tracks it. A team excused under Fall Week 1 submits nothing here.

Term Startup

A short text entry, one line per item on your term’s list, numbered as the list is: done, with the date; not done yet, with what happens next and by when. It is graded complete or incomplete, never on the writing. In winter and spring, your week 2 TA check-in picks up any item still not done.

If your project is under NDA

Nothing on these lists needs partner-confidential material. The report states dates, names, and your cadence, which an NDA doesn’t cover. Fall item 6 is where you ask when you can sign it and what it changes about repository access.

Rubric

Introduction Email

Rubric: 25 points across 1 criteria

Criterion

Ratings

Introduction email sentsent to the project partner of record, or the mentor where the team has no partner25 points

Complete (25)Sent and submitted by the deadline, to the project partner of record or, where the team has no partner, the mentor, with every teammate on Cc. The PDF shows the sent timestamp, From, To, the Cc line, the subject, and the whole body. A reply is not required. Incomplete (0)Not sent or not submitted by the deadline, sent to someone other than the partner or mentor, a teammate missing from Cc, or a submission that does not show the timestamp, the headers, or the whole body.

Term Startup

Rubric: 100 points across 1 criteria

Criterion	Ratings
Status reportone line per item on the term's list100 points	Complete (100)Submitted by the deadline, with a line for every item on the term's list: done, with the date; not done yet, with what happens next and by when; or does not apply, where the list allows it. An item waiting on the partner counts once the report gives the date the team asked. Incomplete (0)Not submitted by the deadline, or an item is missing or reported without a date or a next step.

Activities That Prepare This

Map Your External Approvals in fall, because its first step is asking your partner what access and approvals the project needs, who files them, and how long each takes. 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 Risk when these run out.