Call for Projects
You have a problem or an idea that requires developing a mobile application, a Web application or some other software application? But you don't have developers to implement it? Great, now you do!
We have a course at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Tartu called "Software Project". In this course, mainly our final-year IT students get together in teams to build an IT solution using the knowledge accumulated during their studies. And here comes the best part. The solution they build can be yours to keep. Over the past 10+ years, our students have developed hundreds of prototypes and also systems in everyday use for a wide range of fields. Some recent examples include:
- The Android and iPhone clients of XLaw - a tool that is used by Estonian lawyers to conveniently navigate across legal texts.
- A first version of the Android mobile banking app of BigBank.
- The initial version of MatchMySound's automated feedback tool for music learners.
- The scripting engine for ESTCube-2's Satellite Mission Control System.
The teams will carry out your project between 6 September and 20 December. Each team will consist of four highly motivated students who will collectively spend at least 600 person-hours on your project.
If you are interested in proposing a project for our students, all we need is a simple one-page description focusing on what IT solution you want, what problem it will solve and for which users you want to build it. Your project description should be written in English, as there are non-Estonian staff members involved in teaching the course and some students are also from abroad. You can find some sample project proposals from previous years here, here, and here.
For writing your proposal, please use this Project Proposal Template.
Project proposals should be sent to Marinos Georgiadis, e-mail: marinos.georgiadis at ut.ee by 5 September 2023.
Additional details
As this project is part of academic studies, we do have some constraints and / or things you should bear in mind when proposing your project:
- We - the course coordinators - will check your proposal and will tell you if we find that the project you propose is too small or too large for this course. If it is too large, we will propose you some ideas to reduce the size and complexity.
- It may happen that none of the teams selects your project proposal. If this is the case, we can propose your project to students taking other similar courses.
- You are expected to meet with the students (physically or remotely) every week or every two weeks, in order to explain your requirements and to check if the developing outcomes fulfil your requirements.
- If you prefer to own the software that the students will produce, you should sign an agreement with the students upfront. By default, we expect students to publish their code under Simplified FreeBSD license.
- If you need to have exclusive rights to the work done and/or require students to sign NDA covering the work, you can ask the students to do so at the start of the project. If you wish to own the Intellectual Property (IP), the default template we recommend for IP assignment is this one.
- The developers are students of computer science and software engineering. This means that frequently the product they deliver to you is a prototype. It may need to be refined and tested further before you can use it "in production". In the past, some of the customers of the completed projects have hired the students part-time after the completion of the project to make the product ready for real-life use.
Further information: Marinos Georgiadis - e-mail: marinos.georgiadis at ut.ee