Career readiness, including nontechnical or soft skills, is vital to the successful completion of large projects. For information technology (IT) graduates wanting to participate in large-scale real-world projects, indicators of career readiness include effective communication, oral presentation, and technical writing skills, and the ability to work in a team. So, in general, how should science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and IT curricula provide students with the necessary soft skills? Li et al. address this nontrivial question.

The authors concisely review the benefits of effective capstone projects, which provide IT students with the opportunity to apply soft skills, knowledge, competence, and ethics in real-world situations. They then give a course outline for a capstone project course: a call for proposals; a project introduction that includes application, assignment, implementation, and presentation of results; and a deliverable report with progress tracking and evaluation.

To promote career readiness skills across all STEM fields, the authors outline a lively capstone management system (CMS) consisting of four components: “sponsor registration and proposal submission, project application and automatic assignment, capstone dashboard/progress tracking, and capstone project evaluation.” They also present an adaptable generic database and user interface designs for promoting computer science, software engineering, cybersecurity, and IT career readiness skills.

In summary, Li et al. address some major research questions: Why do undergraduate student teams minimize communications as the project progresses? Should the emerging technologies used for engaging students in different STEM fields differ? How should academics and industrial experts cope with “dysfunctional” teams?