In this unit, you integrate and apply the knowledge and skills you have gained in your course to create an industry-relevant team project. Students must form teams of a minimum of 3 students and a maximum of 4 students, with any larger teams at the discretion of the Unit Coordinator. Teams should be formed before the end of Week 1, with roles and responsibilities agreed upon at your project meeting in Week 2. Change of topic or team once the Project Plan deadline has passed is only allowed in special circumstances with approval from the Unit Coordinator.

Components

This assessment is split into two (2) deliverables:

1.    Draft Report
2.    Final Report

Expectations of Final Report

Your Final Report must document technical artefacts of the entire project. The content may vary depending on the chosen topic and the problem being addressed. As well as the technical artefacts, all Final Reports must include an overview of the entire project and an evaluation of the ethical and professional issues encountered during the project and/or envisaged in the future. The following are examples of technical artefacts that may be included in a Final Report.

•    Detailed description of the problem from a business and technical perspective
•    Review of existing/competing products, solutions, or literature
•    Identification, selection and justification of appropriate network and security technologies to solve the problem
•    Specification of requirements, for example, functional, usability, reliability, performance, security
•    Logical and/or physical network designs
•    Design of network/security architectures, protocols or algorithms
•    Network and security policies, for example, disaster recovery plan, password policies, and business continuity plan
•    Risk assessment
•    Recommended security controls to solve the problem
•    Documentation of a rapid prototype of a solution to the problem
•    Results from security/penetration testing on a system
• Deploy network/security components, such as database/web servers in the cloud.

As different groups are undertaking various projects, you should discuss with your Project Mentor (tutor) the expected artefacts for your project.

Expectations of Draft Report

Your Draft Report consists of the latest versions of your technical artefacts produced by the deadline. See the list above for examples of technical artefacts from the Final Report. Some artefacts will be complete (or close to the final version), and some may be partially complete (e.g., some sections complete, others empty). You will typically not include artefacts you have started but made very little progress (e.g. less than 50% complete). The Draft Report is an opportunity to get feedback on your current progress. As with the Final Report, discuss with your Project Mentor what is expected for your project. Your Project Mentor will advise you on which artefacts to include or omit from the Draft Report. Your Draft Report will be released to other students.

Format and Submission

The Final Report should be presented as a formal, technical document (e.g. with title, section headings, references, diagrams, tables). The report must be submitted as a Microsoft Word document. You are encouraged to use separate documents/files for different artefacts. For example, if your group has developed a privacy policy and undertaken a risk assessment, they should be submitted as separate documents, with the Final Report simply referring to them. That is, you may submit a Final Report (Word doc), Privacy Policy (Word doc), Risk Assessment (Word doc), Network Design (Visio file) and so on.

The Draft Report should be presented and submitted in the same manner as the final report. Where sections are missing or incomplete, you should mark them (e.g. "This section is not yet complete.").

All group documents and technical artefacts must be stored on a Microsoft Teams channel created for your group by the Unit Coordinator and shared with your Project Mentor (tutor) and Unit Coordinator. With prior approval of the Unit Coordinator, a collaborative platform other than Microsoft Teams may be used. While documents are stored in Teams, they must be submitted on Moodle.

Contribution to Grade

1. Draft Report: 10% with a minimum requirement of 5 marks. 
2. Final Report: 30% with a minimum requirement of 15 marks. 

Individual and Group Contributions

Both reports are group work. If all team members make similar contributions, then all team members will typically receive the same mark. However, if there are noticeably different contributions from some team members, different individual marks may be awarded for some or all parts of the assessment. In the report, you must declare individual contributions (even if you contributed equally) with specific details. If your report does not have a particular contribution declaration, you may receive a deduction as specified in the marking guide in Moodle. The project mentor or Unit Coordinator may seek further information from team members, including via interviews, to evaluate the contributions.  

Marking Criteria

Your Final Report will be marked based on:

• Problem definition. You must clearly and concisely describe the problem your project is attempting to solve.
• Approach. The methodologies, tools and techniques you use to solve the problem must be appropriate.
• Solution quality and depth. Your solution must demonstrate an investigation into significant depth, and the resulting outputs must be of the quality expected of a graduate.
• Evaluation of ethical and professional issues. Your evaluation must demonstrate an understanding of the issues and identify appropriate strategies for handling the issues.
• Presentation. For example, formatting, grammar, and referencing.

The reports, especially the solution quality and depth, will be assessed considering the project management activities (for example, Project Plan, progress reports, and quality review). For instance, a low score may be awarded if the project does not deliver what the Project Plan promised and the changes have not been justified in progress reports. However, if the project delivers what is promised but lacks technical depth in that deliverable, then a low score may still be awarded.

The Draft Report will be marked in the same manner as the Final Report.

This unit is 12 credit points and requires significant work every week with frequent assessment deadlines. If you get behind and miss a deadline, catching up will be very hard. Therefore, any late submissions more than 7 days after the original deadline for all assessments will receive zero marks.

In this unit, a minimum mark requirement applies to both the Draft Report and the Final Report. Any score below 50% on either report will fail the unit.

Detailed marking criteria are available on Moodle.

Components

This assessment is split into two (2) deliverables:

1. Self-Assessment
2. Progress reporting     

Expectations of Self-Assessment:

At the start of the project, you must identify your career goals, including your preferred job role upon graduation, and self-assess your current knowledge, skills and abilities against those expected of an IT professional. You will highlight gaps and identify tasks you aim to focus on in the project to fill those gaps.

At the end of the project, you must reflect on your work, your achievement in filling gaps identified at the start of the term, and your plans for the next steps in your career.

Expectations of Progress Reporting:

You must use a GitHub repository to maintain all project documentation and track project management, e.g., with a Kanban board. You must use Microsoft Teams for all communications within your group, including online meetings. You must meet weekly with your project mentor to discuss project status (e.g., on the Kanban board), significant issues or risks, and resource utilisation (e.g., budget usage).

You will be expected to answer questions about your progress report during week 5 and week 9 consultations. The final part of the progress report will be included in the final report.

Format and Submission

Self-Assessment:

A self-assessment report (individual submission) should be uploaded to Moodle. Details are available on Moodle.

Progress Reporting:

All groups must create a GitHub private repository at the start of the term (one student creates and invites other students, the project mentor and the unit coordinator as collaborators).  All working documents and code should be uploaded to the GitHub repository containing all working documents and code. Contributions (commits) to the repository indicate student contribution to the project. Individual marks may be awarded based on this and other information. Groups must create and maintain a GitHub project, e.g. a Kanban board, that lists tasks.  Each weekly meeting with the project mentor starts with 10 minutes of the groups showing and updating the Kanban board.

Contribution to Grade

• Self-Assessment = 5 %
• Progress Reporting: 15%

Marking Criteria

Your Self Assessment will be marked based on:

• Genuine and in-depth self-assessment of knowledge, skills and abilities
• Ability to identify specific, relevant activities to fill in gaps that will contribute to future career goals

Your progress reporting will be marked based on the following:

• Effective use of tools and techniques for project management
• Regular contributions to the project activities by all team members
• Depth and quality of your technical contributions
• Identification of challenges in the project and practical approaches to deal with those challenges

Failure to publish artefacts on GitHub will result in 0 marks for the individual and group Project progress reports. Attendance at the scheduled project meeting with the mentor is required for each week that a progress report is due (weeks 5 and 9). If you do not attend (and do not have a valid reason, for example, a medical certificate), then you may receive zero marks for the progress report. 

This unit is 12 credit points and requires a significant amount of work every week with frequent assessment deadlines. If you get behind and miss a deadline, it will be very hard to catch up. Therefore, any late submissions more than 7 days after the original deadline for all assessments will receive zero marks.

Detailed marking criteria are available on Moodle.

Components

This assessment is split into two (2) deliverables:

1. Project Plan 
2. Project Reflection 

Expectations of Project Plan

Your Project Plan must:

• Define the problem your team will solve
• Identify the roles and responsibilities of team members
• Schedule a set of tasks and deliverables, i.e. artefacts
• List anticipated challenges and mitigation strategies
• Budget for software or hardware costs, as well as access to resources (e.g. labs, cloud computing)  
• Predict ethical or professional issues that may arise during or after the project (e.g., due to the product you deliver) and identify strategies to deal with those issues.

Expectations of Reflection

This is a written task where you will reflect on your project experience, including the technical and management issues that arose in the project and your key learnings from the project. You will also be expected to reflect on how the project will contribute to your future career goals. 

Format and Submission

The Project Plan and Reflection must be submitted as reports (for example, Microsoft Word documents). Where appropriate, other documents (for example, initial network designs) may be submitted in other file formats as appendices to the report.

All group documents and technical artefacts must be stored on a Microsoft Teams channel created for your group by the Unit Coordinator and shared with your Project Mentor (tutor) and Unit Coordinator. With prior approval of the Unit Coordinator, a collaborative platform other than Microsoft Teams may be used. While documents are stored in Teams, they must be submitted on Moodle.

Contribution to Grade

1. Project Plan: 12%
2. Project Reflection: 8%

Individual and Group Contributions

The Project Plan is group work, and the Project Reflection is individual work.

Marking Criteria

Your Project Plan will be marked based on:

• Depth and quality of planning.
• Ability to identify issues relevant to your specific project.

Usually, all group members will receive the same mark for the project plan. However, suppose the project mentor or Unit Coordinator detects significant differences in contributions among group members. In that case, interviews may be held to determine individual contributions and individual marks may be allocated based on those contributions.

Your Project Reflection will be marked based on:

• Genuine and in-depth reflection on your experience of doing the project tasks.
• Ability to identify what you have learnt during this project.
• Analysis of hurdles faced while doing this project and how you overcame those hurdles. Discussion on lessons learnt from this experience.
• Analysis of how this project experience will contribute to your future career goals.
• Ethical and professional issues were handled during this project.

Failure to publish artefacts on Portfolium will result in 0 marks for the Project Reflection.

This unit is 12 credit points and requires a significant amount of work every week with frequent assessment deadlines. If you get behind and miss a deadline, it will be very hard to catch up. Therefore, any late submissions more than 7 days after the original deadline for all assessments will receive zero marks.

Detailed marking criteria are available on Moodle.

Components

This assessment is split into two (2) deliverables:

1. Practice Presentation
2. Final Presentation

Expectations of Final Presentation

In your final presentation, you must convince the audience that your work is substantial, of high quality, relevant to your major and that you have applied appropriate processes to complete the job. The audience may include students from this unit, other students, your project mentor, the Unit Coordinator, other academic staff, alumni, and industry representatives. The presentation will be time-limited (to be confirmed during the term). Therefore, you must design your presentation to convey the key aspects of your project, taking into account the audience and time limitations. While the content/structure of your presentation is mainly your choice, it must at least include:

1. Identification of your project topic, mentor, group members and major contributions of group members.
2. Reflection on technical challenges, for example, what new things you learned, what was difficult, and how you solved problems.
3. Demonstrate the system you develop or solve the problem.

You may use various presentation tools (including live demonstrations, videos, and screenshots), but slides must support your presentation.

Expectations of Practice Presentation

This will be practice for the Final Presentation, and therefore, the instructions for the Final Presentation apply. As your project may not be finished, not all aspects will be able to be presented. However, a demonstration is expected to be included (that is, you cannot just discuss your design without demonstrating any parts).

Format and Submission

Your group must deliver your Practice Presentation live in your regular project meeting with your mentor.

Your group must deliver your Final Presentation live using Zoom video conferencing. The final presentations will be scheduled as a conference-style event lasting up to one day. Groups will be assigned time slots during the day and must view other groups' presentations. The presentation day is planned for Monday of Week 13; the final date and detailed presentation schedule will be announced during the term.

For both the Practice Presentation and Final Presentation, you must submit at least PowerPoint slides on Moodle by the deliverable deadline. Other slide formats (including PDF) are not acceptable unless permission is granted in advance by the unit coordinator. You may optionally submit other resources (e.g., videos) besides the slides.

All group documents and technical artefacts must be stored on a Microsoft Teams channel created for your group by the Unit Coordinator and shared with your Project Mentor (tutor) and Unit Coordinator. With prior approval of the Unit Coordinator, a collaborative platform other than Microsoft Teams may be used. While documents are stored in Teams, they must be submitted on Moodle.

You may receive a Zero (0) in this assessment If you fail to appear on the planned demonstration/presentation day. The assessment specification on your Moodle website will further detail each of the points above.

Contribution to Grade

1. Practice Presentation: 5%
2. Final Presentation: 15%

Individual and Group Contributions

Both presentations are group presentations; however, some marks will be allocated to individuals. All members of the group must present. All members will receive the same group score (unless exceptional circumstances, e.g., one member does not present). The score will be based on how you present your part and answer questions. Different students in your team may receive different individual scores.

Marking Criteria

Both presentations will be marked based on the following:

1. Content quality and relevance [Group]. For example, sufficient technical depth, appropriate contributions presented, engaging and clearly explained content, and reflections on learnings.
2. Demonstration of prototype/system [Group]. For example, appropriate technologies are chosen and shown, demonstrating the application of knowledge and skills.
3. Presentation organisation and flow [Group]: for example, keeping to the time limit, preparedness, visual aids, and quality of demonstrations.
4. Presentation skills [Individual]: For example, speaking skills, confidence, responding to questions, and demonstrating an understanding of the content.

Detailed marking criteria are available on Moodle.