khsa0301:Hi all- I am creating this new thread for Final Capstone. I would appreciate if you can post your final Capstone experience.
Thanks for opening this thread up... I'd like to share some of the sage wisdom i received...
I had the opportunity to speak with a cousin-in-law who is a College professor, and with a high-school friend who is, also, a university professor...
I took the MBA/IM program, and finished up all my classes before takin the capstone (once I finished it up, I took the final exam - essay format_... I have worked in the IT field or many years, so I decided to take on something in the IT field for my capstone project.
I started looking at MIT's online courseware (it's on the web and you can download course syllabi and materials for free)... I found a doctoral reearch 101-type course, and one of the assignments was to look at a table of data (could ahave been two tables, come to think of it)... the data represented the variables, and the first assignment was 'what story can you tell about this data'... it got me thinking about the relationship between the variables, and not just looking at tables of data... it was a rather open-ended exercise, but it gets you thinking...
Then, I had the chance to chat in person with my two college professors... (I also had obtained the book for the Capstone Course - I liked the author's approach [Trochim]...)... it helped me form the question to my professor friend - "I know an area I want to use as my capstoner project, but there are myriad ways I can look at the topic I chose - how do I narrow it down?"
After a few back-and-forth responses and follow-up questions, my friend hit upon what I needed to hear:
"find a subject area, then focus on it until you have a 'question' that only involves a single variable which can be researched. If you don't go down far enough, you may nevere be able to prove a direct cause-effect relaationship with your reasearch question. Spend time wokring on that first; too many research papers get rejected because they don't isolate 'that one' variable which cuts to the heart of the question being researched. Next, research the heck out of it. Research, done properly, starts with an exhaustive search of existing papers, etc. You can't be to thorough on this part, and it's a common failing point for research papers - they try to make a point that someone else already made. Spend a major portion of your time on this."
Talk about finding a pearl of wisdom! I took his advice (hey, I'm not too proud, and he was the one with the PhD position at the University of Chicago... 
)
I started down that path, was able to narrow the problem down to a single variable, and started my researching existing literature (searched almost everything I could find in Proquest, and in other libraries as well - even using journals Proquest pointed me to as a springboard for further digging). I included that literature search in my proposal, and by that time I had figured out what I was going to 'research myself', how I was going to ask it, etc. I put this all into my capstone proposal doc initially submitted, and even took the time ot put in APA style. I was pleased to see that it got accepted without needing to be tweaked, and I was able to start on it right away (ok, technically it was more of a 'continue' then a 'start'...)
One tough part was finding an audience to research - fortunately, however, I have a sister-in-law who worked in the field I was focusing my IT-based research question, and she put me in touch with someone in her organization who agreed to participate in the research since it was for a college project only, and was not tied in with ANYTHING business-related (meaning i successfully convinced her that I was doing this strictly as a college student, and not as an IT professional - if you knew the company i work for, you'd understand this last statement) ....
Not only did this person help, but also put the initial research note (which I had created) on a LISTSERV server for others in similar organizations, worldwide. I had only looked only to work with homogenous organizations in my locale, but this exposure to a much larger audience was more than I could have hoped for!
I ended up setting up a website for the survey I had set up as the tool to query the research question (and I used some PHP code to capture IP addresses to ensure no duplicate entries... at least, as best as could be done.
The survey period was active for about three weeks. I gathered my date, then started crunching the numbers.
Since I had the existing research already loaded into my capstone proposal doc, it (the number-crunching and subsequent analysis) worked its way easily into the actual capstone paper itself.
Numeric analysis was aided by the course text and some additional outside texts/sources as well... Writing up the final parts to the capstone doc itself (the conclusion/discussion/etc.) was tons of fun.
Again, careful attention to "am I still on the mark?" helped. Anyone who has done proper Root Cause Analysis will understand the discipline needed to not 'veer off' onto a bunny tral, the K.I.S.S. rule, and other helpful IT-based axioms from time past and present... 
Bottom line - find an area, then pare it down, tossing out pieces along the way, until you get to a single question which can be researched (through survey, model building, testing, etc.). Once you have gotten to this point, let it become your focus. Set up your 'approach', carefully pay attention to the details along the way, and stop once you have found your answer.
Hope this helps... please post your feedback on this, or feel free to ask questions - I'll do my best to answer...
It also helps to have a very understanding spouse and family... 