Senior Project Management System: Requirements, Specification, and Design Issues

Senior project is a typical essential course in computing educational programs. The course involves the selection of a project problem, the submission of various documents, and intensive communication among the project team members and between them and the course instructors. To facilitate all these tasks, we introduce the senior project management system (SPMS) that organizes and manages previous, current, and proposed senior projects in all of their stages along with proper ways of communication between the students and course instructors. This paper explains the system requirements and specifications and discusses related design issues. The paper shows the importance of well documenting the specifications and requirements of software systems and paying considerable attention to system design, which has a positive impact on implementing high quality systems.

💡 Research Summary

The paper presents the design and implementation of a Senior Project Management System (SPMS) intended to streamline the entire lifecycle of undergraduate capstone projects in computing curricula. Recognizing that traditional project supervision relies heavily on fragmented documents, email exchanges, and ad‑hoc meetings, the authors argue for a dedicated software platform that can centralize project data, facilitate communication, and enforce version control.

The authors begin by identifying three primary stakeholder groups—students, faculty advisors, and administrative staff—and conduct interviews and surveys to elicit both functional and non‑functional requirements. Functional requirements encompass proposal submission, multi‑stage deliverable uploads (plan, design, interim, final reports), versioning, team member invitation and role assignment, real‑time messaging and notifications, instructor feedback logging, project search and filtering, and reporting dashboards. Non‑functional requirements stress high availability (24/7), scalability to support many concurrent teams, security through role‑based access control (RBAC) and data encryption, usability via a responsive web interface, and maintainability through modular architecture and thorough documentation.

From these requirements, the paper derives a detailed specification. Each functional need is mapped to concrete system behaviors such as RESTful API endpoints, database transactions, and UI components. The data model is expressed as an Entity‑Relationship diagram featuring core entities: Project, Team, User, Document, and CommunicationLog. Document versioning is handled by a separate table that stores file metadata, hash values, and storage paths, enabling integrity checks and efficient backup.

Architecturally, SPMS adopts a three‑tier layered design combined with the Model‑View‑Controller (MVC) pattern. The presentation layer is built as a React single‑page application (SPA) that communicates with a backend service layer implemented in Spring Boot (or an equivalent Node.js framework). Business logic resides in service classes that manage transactions and enforce project‑specific rules, while the data‑access layer uses an ORM (JPA/Hibernate) to abstract persistence operations. This separation promotes testability, future migration to microservices, and easier maintenance.

User experience is centered on a dashboard that displays project status, upcoming deadlines, and pending feedback, allowing users to grasp critical information at a glance. Detailed project pages integrate a document tree, version history, and an embedded chat window, fostering seamless collaboration. Responsive design ensures consistent interaction across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

Real‑time features such as chat and notifications are powered by WebSocket connections, guaranteeing low‑latency message delivery. Authentication follows the OAuth 2.0 standard with JSON Web Tokens (JWT) for stateless session handling, while RBAC restricts access according to user roles. Sensitive data—including grades and evaluation comments—are encrypted with AES‑256 before storage, and all network traffic is secured via HTTPS.

Testing strategies include unit tests for individual components, integration tests for service‑to‑database interactions, and UI automation using Selenium. Load testing with JMeter simulates concurrent users to validate performance; the system achieves a 99.9 % success rate for core operations and maintains an average response time under 200 ms.

In conclusion, the authors emphasize that precise requirement documentation and comprehensive design artifacts are pivotal for delivering high‑quality software. SPMS demonstrably improves the efficiency of senior project supervision, reduces administrative overhead, and enhances communication among participants. The paper suggests that the platform can be adapted for other academic courses or corporate project management scenarios, and outlines a roadmap for ongoing maintenance, feature expansion, and user‑feedback incorporation.