FP6900 Assessment 4 guide: capstone report and PowerPoint
The capstone's finale in two artifacts: a 25-40 page formal stakeholder report with ten-plus APA sources, and a 10-20 slide PowerPoint with presenter notes that must stand on its own — both graded against all seven course competencies at once.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 11, 2026
What changes when the reader is a stakeholder, not a grader?
The audience assignment is the design decision most submissions miss: the final report is a formal document prepared for the key stakeholders of the project — not for your instructor — which changes the register, the front matter and the structure. Stakeholders get an executive summary that could be read alone, a problem statement in business terms, an alternatives analysis with the evidence behind it, and recommendations with an implementation path and costs; they do not get literature-review throat-clearing. The brief is deliberately loose about structure ('will vary according to the type of project') and firm about substance: 25-40 pages, ten-plus APA sources, and — because the course is sequenced — the architecture you committed to in the annotated outline of the previous assessment is the skeleton this report fills in, heading for heading, with the annotated bibliography's sources landing where you said they would.
The seven competencies listed in the brief are the actual rubric, and they are graded across both artifacts, so audit the draft against each by name: systems-and-technology knowledge shows up in the problem analysis; cross-disciplinary integration in how finance, operations and marketing evidence meet in one argument; evidence-based critical thinking in the alternatives analysis; innovation and sustainability in the recommendations; leadership and collaboration in the implementation plan's treatment of teams and global or cultural context; ethics and integrity in an explicit consideration of who the recommendation affects; and communication in everything. A 30-page report can satisfy six competencies and fail the seventh silently — the ethics competency is the one most often left implicit, and it needs its own visible paragraph in the report, not an aura of responsible tone spread thinly across it.
The PowerPoint has its own stated test: it should stand on its own, with presenter notes adding clarity — meaning a reader who never heard you speak gets the full argument from slides plus notes. Build it as the report's executive layer, not its compression: the problem, the two or three decisive findings, the recommendation, the implementation ask, in 10-20 slides with one idea per slide and the supporting detail in the notes, citations included in APA where evidence appears. Practically, write the report first, extract the presentation second, and hold a page-budget line early — 25 pages of disciplined argument beats 40 pages that dilute it, and the range's width is permission to stop when the argument is complete, not a target to pad toward — assessors of capstones read the padding instantly.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Write a formal report addressed to project stakeholders: executive summary, business-terms problem, alternatives, costed recommendations.
- 02Fill the architecture committed in the annotated outline, landing each bibliography source where it was promised.
- 03Audit the draft against all seven named competencies, giving ethics its own visible treatment.
- 04Build a standalone presentation: one idea per slide, full argument recoverable from slides plus presenter notes.
- 05Manage the 25-40 page range as permission to be complete, not a padding target.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01The final capstone paper: a formal stakeholder document of approximately 25-40 double-spaced pages, Times New Roman 12.
- 02A 10-20 slide PowerPoint presenting the project, recommendations and takeaways, with presenter notes that make it stand alone.
- 03A minimum of ten resources cited in APA (6th edition) across the paper, and cited in the presentation where used.
How do the report and slides divide the capstone's argument?
The stakeholder frame
Open the report as a decision document: executive summary, the business problem in stakeholder terms, and what the report will let them decide.
Evidence and alternatives
Deliver the analytical core: the researched evidence from your ten-plus sources, structured as an alternatives analysis that leads to a defensible choice.
Recommendations and implementation
State the recommendation with its innovation and sustainability case, then the implementation plan: teams, timeline, costs, and the leadership and collaboration it requires.
The ethics paragraph
Address explicitly who the recommendation affects and how ethical principles shaped the choice — the competency most reports leave to inference.
The standalone deck
Extract the executive layer into 10-20 slides — problem, decisive findings, recommendation, ask — with presenter notes carrying full clarity and citations.
Which conventions govern stakeholder reports and standalone decks?
Recommended databases
- The Assessment 3 annotated bibliography (your own, first)
- Capella library
- Writing-center and presentation conventions
Search sequence
- 1.Start from your annotated bibliography — the ten sources and their promised uses are the report's evidence plan.
- 2.Fill gaps the final argument exposes with targeted searches rather than broad re-research.
- 3.Review executive-summary conventions so the stakeholder frame is structurally right.
- 4.Draft the report inside the Assessment 3 outline, then extract the deck.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Executive Summary - Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper
Research Guides, University of Southern California · 2024
The stakeholder document's defining component — what an executive summary must let a reader decide without reading further, which sets the register for the whole report.
- 02
Abstracts
The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · 2024
The summary-writing discipline carried over from the previous assessment — how the report's front matter reports findings rather than promising them.
- 03
Writing and Using Learning Objectives
CBE—Life Sciences Education / PMC · 2022
The measurable-outcome discipline applied to the competency audit: checking that each of the seven listed competencies is demonstrably, not rhetorically, met.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Writing for the instructor instead of the named stakeholders — academic scaffolding where an executive summary and decision framing belong.
- Abandoning the Assessment 3 outline and re-architecting at the end, which wastes the sequence the course is built on.
- Satisfying six competencies and leaving ethics implicit; it is a listed competency and needs its own paragraph.
- Compressing the report into slides instead of building the deck as its executive layer with detail in the notes.
- Slides that cannot stand alone — the brief's own test — because the argument lives in what you planned to say.
- Padding toward 40 pages when the range is a ceiling; dilution reads as weakness in a stakeholder document.
Submission checklist
- Report addressed to stakeholders: executive summary, problem, alternatives analysis, recommendations, implementation.
- 25-40 pages, double-spaced, TNR 12; ten-plus APA sources cited in text.
- All seven competencies visibly addressed, ethics explicitly.
- 10-20 slides, one idea each, presenter notes carrying the detail, APA citations on evidence slides.
- Deck readable standalone; report and deck consistent on every number and recommendation.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.