IS484 IS Project Experience (FinTech)

This is an SMU-X course designed in collaboration with CitiVentures Innovation Lab. Citibank will supply a minimum of 5 projects ideas to select from.
Students will form teams of 5 or 6, and select one of the Citibank project ideas to work on. Project selections do not need to be unique, meaning multiple teams can select the same project idea.
Each student project team will be assigned to a Citibank sponsor and an SMU faculty supervisor.
Citibank will provide project scope and management for student teams to have practical industry learning experiences.
Student teams will have weekly check in meetings, either virtually or physically, with their Citibank sponsor.
Citibank will specify the technologies to be used, including; development tools/languages, OS, database, 3rd party libraries, target deployment environment e.g. cloud environment.

Week 1 - Attend orientation session, where teams will be formed (if you have not already formed a team), and projects are selected from a set of predefined projects provided by CitiVentures.
Week 8 - Midterm presentation and demo
Week 15 - Final presentation and demo

Student project teams will be expected to develop a working software application prototype, to be delivered to Citibank at the end of the course.
A formal, in-person midterm and final presentation will be facilitated by Citibank.

Projects to be selected/assigned to project teams during Week 1 orientation session.

Item	Project Description	Project Deliverables	Project Sponsor
1	Microservices Architecture in Banking - In recent years, there is much written about microservices architecture. Even so, there is very little written about how microservices are used in the banking industry. A study is needed to understand microservices implementation in banking. Faculty Advisor: Prof Alan Megargel	Research Question 1: How do banks decide on the boundary context and granularity of microservices? Research Question 2: What kind of tool sets do banks use for building, testing, and deploying microservices? Research Question 3: What strategies to banks employ for migrating from monolithic systems to microservices?	Research Method: Data collection through surveys and interviews of bank staff, and existing case studies. Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data collected. Results and Conclusions. Integrated Report: Write up an integrated report covering all 3 research questions. Integrated Demo: Demonstrate a fully functional microservice for a banking context, using the techniques and tools discovered.

Contents