The students worked more than 9,000 hours over six academic quarters to develop a Probate Court Web site for filing court forms. The Web site was launched for public use May 26 for activities related to estates and guardianship of minors or incapacitated adults. The Probate Court project began in January 1998 when students in a Senior Design class in the College of Computing were assigned a project that included the definition, design, implementation, testing and documentation of a significant software system. The capstone course integrates and applies the computing knowledge seniors have gained to a real-world project with real customers. Leo Mark, an associate professor in the College of Computing , and Lisa Sills, a senior research scientist in the Georgia Tech Research Institute, collaborated to have the court project become the senior project for Mark's class.
Sills is the program manager for the Georgia courts program.
Tech has worked with the Georgia Courts Automation Commission since 1996 to create a computer system for the Superior Court. The Probate Court project integrates a Web-based interface with a database, is designed for scalability and supports 55 standard forms used by the Georgia Probate Court. Sills and Mark say it is the only online probate court system of its kind in the nation. My students were able to deliver a large, complex project. Traditionally, students in this class complete small projects for internal campus clients.