One of the biggest challenges I faced during my capstone period was effectively defining the problem I wanted to address through my project. Coming up with a well-defined, actionable problem statement is so important as it lays the foundation for the entire project. In the initial stages, I had a vague idea of an area I was interested in but had not narrowed it down to a specific problem. This led to a lot of wasted time researching too broadly without focus.
To overcome this, I took several brainstorming sessions to thoroughly map out all the problems, pain points and opportunities within my area of interest. I created mind maps, wrote out user stories and even conducted some informal interviews with potential stakeholders to gain better insights. This helped crystallize the problem I wanted to tackle. I then developed an initial problem statement which I refined further after discussing it with my capstone advisor. Defining the problem clearly early on allowed me to properly scope and plan the rest of my project.
Another major challenge I encountered was related to project execution – specifically keeping track of the enormous amount of moving parts as the project progressed and keeping myself accountable to deadlines. As the scope and complexity of the capstone project was much larger than anything I had undertaken before, it was easy to lose sight of the overall timeline and dependencies between tasks.
To manage this complexity, I created detailed project plans using Microsoft Project. I broke down the project into individual work streams, tasks and sub-tasks with clear owners, start and end dates. I also identified task dependencies, established regular check-ins with my advisor and set reminders in my calendar to ensure I was continuously monitoring progress against the plan. This project management approach helped me gain visibility and control over the various streams of work. It also ensured I could proactively course correct if any tasks slipped.
Gathering quality insights and feedback from stakeholders was another significant challenge area for me. Given the nature of my project which involved developing a new product, capturing informed, unbiased input from potential users was critical but difficult to achieve. People are often less inclined to engage in feedback exercises for student projects.
To address this, I adopted a multifaceted stakeholder engagement strategy. This included leveraging my personal and professional networks to find an initial set of stakeholders who were interested to provide input. I also conducted guerilla user research by visiting locations where my target users frequented to survey people on the spot. Social listening on online forums related to my topic helped gain additional perspectives. By piecing together insights from different qualitative and quantitative methods, I was able to gather rich stakeholder feedback to inform my solution development.
Towards the later stages, integrating all the individual pieces of work done over the capstone period into a polished final deliverable also emerged as a major hurdle. Pulling everything together coherently required tying up many loose ends as well as ensuring consistency across various components.
To manage this integration effectively, I established a central project folder with clearly defined subfolders for each work stream – research, design, development etc. I created templates for documents, presentations and reports to maintain uniformity. I also allowed buffer time in my schedule for testing and refining the final deliverable based on feedback. This comprehensive organizational approach along with peer reviews helped me pull all elements together into a high quality, well-rounded capstone package.
The capstone project period posed several challenges related to problem definition, complex project execution, stakeholder engagement and final integration. With methods like thorough brainstorming, detailed project planning, multifaceted research and centralized organization – I believe I was able to adequately overcome these hurdles and deliver a meaningful solution through an iterative learning process. The capstone experience has certainly helped strengthen my ability to plan, manage and execute large scale projects independently.