Capstone Project

Masters students in SMU's Master of IT in Business (Financial Services) are required to do a major capstone project as a required part of the curriculum.

All of the students have extensive work experience in information technology and/or operations. Students work together with the Banking and Financial Services industry and with SMU faculty to define and execute their projects. The joint effort of defining and executing projects with industry occurs as follows:

1. Students draft a proposal for a project title and its objective.
   
2. Banking & Financial Services firms review the list of proposed project titles, and select one or several project titles they are potentially interested in sponsoring. Firms may also define their own projects for the students to select.
   
3. The firm meets with interested students and selects the student(s) for the projects. Each project is customised to the needs of the firm, and the interests and capabilities of the student.
   
4. The student will work with a supervisor from the firm, and a faculty from SMU, to work out the detailed project definition, and execute the project.

Strictest confidentiality will be kept between the sponsoring company, the students and university advisor. Should any of the information be sanitised before any presentation, the student will forward the necessary presentation materials to the company to view.

The current 2007 cohort are working on the projects listed below:

1. Forecasting for ATM Top-Ups
2. Core Banking Platform Study
3. Strategic Outsourcing of Banking Applications Development & Production Support
4. Enterprise Architecture Integration (EAI) Portal
5. Leveraging BI Platform to Better Predict Customer Behaviour in Banks
6. Capacity Planning
7. Managing the Challenges of Spreadsheet and Other User Developed and Maintained Applications
8. Application of Lean Production Process Improvement on Check Clearing Facilities in Singapore
9. Wholesale Bank Operational Dashboarding
10. Technology and Operations Planning: A Review of GFM Systems and Process and a Strategy for Managing GFM IT for Business Value