About ISMT E-599a: Capstone Seminar in Information Management

Richard Joltes

"Watching students developing their capstone concepts from vague idea to finished product is an incredibly rewarding experience. Projects really begin taking on solid form during the capstone weekend, when everyone has a chance to meet in person, socialize, and spend extended time periods working on their ideas in detail. Sometimes they transform significantly based on feedback from other students or the teaching staff. The breadth of knowledge some students bring to the table is amazing, and we're all richer for it by the end of the term. We also have a lot of fun, with myself and the students play-acting the roles of CEO (in my case the 'PHB' or Pointy-Haired Boss) and co-workers in order to make the process more real and interesting. Every semester is a bit different!" 

— Richard Joltes, Instructor, ISMT E-599a

Course Snapshot

While individual effort is of critical importance to IMS projects, nearly all efforts are created by teams of varying sizes. Each individual brings a specific skill set to the team, ranging from project management to software engineering, analytics, database technologies, and web development.

In the ISMT 599a capstone, you and your teammates will develop a project proposal and schedule, complete with budget, deliverables, infrastructure requirements, metrics, and personnel needs. At the end of the capstone, you will acquire a better understanding of how to address not only technology concerns, but also business requirements and expectations that employers have when committing resources and capital to new IT projects. Your final project, a business project proposal, will be presented to the faculty committee, which will give you a real world sense of how the process works outside an academic setting.