Project Assessment

The semester project is assessed through pods and cross-testing. Teams working under the same regulation converge on a shared specification, independently implement systems against that specification, and then test one another's systems for conformance.

Cross-testing serves two purposes. It provides evidence for assessment, but it also helps teams build better systems: independent tests surface defects, ambiguities, and specification gaps that a team's own tests are likely to miss.

Pod structure. Teams assigned the same regulation form a pod:

• Shared specification — the pod converges on a common interpretation and specification of the regulatory obligation.
• Independent implementation — each team builds its own system against the shared specification.
• Cross-testing — teams test one another's systems against the shared specification, surfacing specification gaps and conformance failures.

The specification is therefore the shared engineering artifact, while the implementations remain independent. The assessment model rewards a specification precise enough that independently developed systems can be tested against it. At the same time, cross-testing creates a feedback loop: failures discovered across implementations can expose weaknesses in either the system or the shared specification.