How to Write a

Methodology
Section for an IT
Capstone Project
Shelaniejean L. Lim, MIT
Divine Word College of Bangued
Objectives
• Discuss the process involved in developing a research
project
Selecting a Methodology for your
Capstone Research
• The information about the materials you used to
conduct your research
– Materials - mean any instruments or equipment you used, any
subjects being studied and any treatments that were
administered as part of your research.

• Explain how you used the materials listed.

– A thorough explanation specific to your research needs to
be provided.
Selecting a Methodology for your
Capstone Research
• Talk about what your research entailed
– how you gathered information and how measurements were
made, when relevant.

• Mention the statistical methods or tests that you used to

analyze the research and data that you collected
using the previously described methods.
• Check your work
– After reading through your methods section, a person should
be able to replicate your research exactly
Selecting a Methodology for your
Capstone Research
• It should include detailed information on:
– the interventions to be made
– procedures to be used e. g. a questionnaire survey, carrying
out a focus group discussion as part of formative research,
observation of the participant's environment, etc.
– measurements to be taken
– observations to be made etc.
Examples of methodologies for your
Capstone Research
• Structured
– Worked well for centralized processing applications and
procedural languages

• Object Oriented
– Based on the interaction that happens between ‘objects’
– Real world objects are modeled by corresponding
programming objects. Objects have state, behaviour and
identity.
The Phases of the SDLC: Software (or
Systems) Development Life Cycle
• The Phases of the SDLC for both the Structured and the
OO methodologies are similar
– Project Planning Phase
– Analysis Phase: understanding business needs
– Design Phase: conceptualizing computer-system
solutions
– Implementation Phase: coding, testing and
installation
– Support Phase
SDLC used for the development of the
Capstone Project
• You will develop your capstone project in teams using
the SDLC
– Project Planning Phase
– Analysis Phase
– Design Phase
– Implementation Phase
– Support Phase (to be negotiated with client)
SDLC Variations
• Developers encounter many variations of SDLC in
practice. Based on:

– Phases
– Iterations
– Emphasis on people
– Speed of development

• BUT you have to understand the basic methodology

before you can vary it
 Phases
• Requirements Specification
– Discussion of the functions of the system supported by Functional Diagram and Data
Flow Diagram

• Analysis Specification
– Discussion of the behavioral properties that the system must have. Sub-topics can be
the performance (speed), security, usability, economic impact and other related
topics

• Design
– Logical and Conceptual design supported by System Flowchart, ERD, Data
Dictionary, System Prototype

• Development and Testing

– Concrete explanation on how the system is developed and tested. Researchers may
pattern/adapt your discussion in any SDLC
Sample
SDLC used for the development of
the Capstone Project
Iterations
 Sample
Spiral Lifecycle Model is an evolutionary version of
incremental prototyping, developed by Boehm in 1988. Each
iteration of the prototype represented as a spiral.
First iteration according to the spiral model is gathering the
data using questionnaire and interview from the respondents
who will serve as a user to determine if the project is attainable.
In this iteration, the researchers distribute questionnaire to the BSIT
1st year students to measure their level of understanding about
the history of DWCB. Likewise the researchers, conduct an
unstructured interview to the different person who has the
knowledge about the history of DWCB. Gathering of different
documentation were also done in this phase.
 Sample
Next step is to plan the second iteration and evaluate what are
the things to be done to make the design for the game. The
researchers in this phase evaluated the gathered data because
those data were used as a baseline for the development of the
game.
Based from the results of the data gathered. It reveals that
majority of the respondents were optimistic about the Remember
Quest Game.
The researchers started the design for the prototype because of
the positive responses of the respondents. Functional diagram, Data
flow diagram, System flowchart, Entity Relationship diagram and
Data dictionary were also done in this phase. These diagrams after
the design were now translated into code. Every module of the
game was developed separately and tested separately.
 Sample
After the development of the
game, dry-run was done to know if
the system is working efficiently and
effectively works as intended platform
and to determine if it does what the
user wants. The researchers conduct
the dry run on January 4, 2012 in
Partido State University, Goa Campus
making use of the BSIT 1st year
students, considering an eighty (80%)
retrieval of data. Table 1 presents the
respondents of the study.
 As presented in Table 1, respondents of the
study is composed of the following, BSIT 1A with
thirty (30), BSIT 1B with twenty (27), BSIT 1C with
twenty nine (29) and BSIT 1A with twenty seven (27)
students for a total of 113 students.
During the dry-run, the researchers ask the BSIT
1st year students to play the game and to answer
simple questions and give comments for the system.
The researchers used the percentage technique As shown in the Figure,
to present the result of the dry-run. The formula is: 13% of the students
“strongly agree”, 85%
P = (f/n) x 100 “agree”, and 2% “fairly
agree” that the system is
Figure 17 shows the result of the dry-run when the easy to navigate. These
respondents were asked if the system is easy to showed that the user find
understand. it easy to communicate
the game.
 On the issue of reliability and usability of the game, it clearly
present that the system is highly reliable and usable, with the
percentage of 85% for “strongly agree” and 15% “agreed”,
respectively. Since the students strongly agree the game is
reliable and usable, the researchers believed that the
Remember Quest game can really promote the history of Divine
Word College of Bangued.
Respondents even say it was nice, fantastic, very fun and
enjoyable. In addition, according to them, the game gives
them additional knowledge about DWCB.
With this optimistic response from the respondents, the
researchers believed the Remember Quest game can really
promote the history of DWCB.
 Common Methodologies for
Capstone Projects
• The traditional systems development lifecycle methodology
(SDLC) (or waterfall), spiral, incremental
• Prototyping
• Rapid Application Development (RAD)
• Agile methods e.g. Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum,
Lean Development, Adaptive Software Development
(ASD), Crystal methods, Feature Driven Development
(FDD), and Dynamic Systems Development Method
(DSDM)
• Object-oriented Methodologies
Question???