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Validate your Software Idea '26

Organization: Universiteit van Amsterdam Subject: Software Engineering City: Amsterdam

Summary

Let talented Master Software Engineering students work on your software idea! As part of a course on Requirements Engineering, they will validate and work out your software idea. The goal is to advice you, based on data, on what value it delivers and whether the software solution is indeed needed.

Description

A crucial part of software engineering is learning what software solution is needed and the value it will deliver to both the company and the users. Our students, with their background in IT, already have an understanding of what is possible. Using their analytical capability and working under guidance of experienced analysts and designers they can now do the research that is needed to come up with a solution that is of real value to you and your customers.

The teams will follow a basic plan:

Understand the vision and problem domain;

Map the territory: identify where necessary information can be found;

Validate the problem: what exactly is the problem that is being solved, to whom is it a problem, and how significant is it

Work out different solution scenarios

Design and, if time permits, run some experiments to test the most promising solution

✅ Key features of the challenge

Students per team: 4-10 students

Teams per challenge: 1-3 (when submitting indicate how many teams you prefer)

Course: Requirements Engineering

Programme: Software Engineering (UvA)

No. of hours spent per team (based on four students): 200 hours

Deliverables: Presentation, prototype and report with recommendations

Company time investment: Your time involvement is around 12 hours

Matching fee: €850,- (ex tax, charged by Master Challenge (NOT the university), that is a flat fee regardless of the number of teams you get assigned)

Some projects of the past years

IT strategy to optimize digital presence in local markets

Helping companies to become NIS 2 compliant

Your smart assistant to find the right gift

Using smart online presence to reach target groups and persuade them to visit art exhibitions

What should the UvA offer to support life long learning

Streamlining school administration

Next generation of a well being app

Selecting the right Learning Management System for the UvA

Applicability of light weight cost estimation model for software projects

User needs for Open Overheid

Key features for travel website

Key features for a job site

Your Digital legacy

🏢 Company requirements

To do good research the teams need good data, be able to talk to stakeholders, (future) users, and examine the current processes

We encourage a wide variety of companies to apply and do not limit ourselves to a specific industry or sector

👉 What does the challenge ask of you as a company when matched to a team?

To get the teams up to speed please provide an elaborated briefing in the first week of the project, with links to relevant information. Also setup some first meetings with major stakeholders and future users.

💰 Costs

To help facilitate this challenge we charge a matching fee of €850,- (ex tax).

❗️You will only be charged when matched to a team.

❗️Non-profit organisations / NGO's / Overheidsorganisaties / Onderwijsinstellingen: free of charge

📨 How to apply

You can submit the challenge directly through the website. Provide a title that summarises the challenge. Subsequently, briefly elaborate on your challenge. See link for a template you could use: https://link.masterchallenge.me/challenge-template or use the challenge generator: https://masterchallenge.me/challenge-generator

🗓 Planning

July 23: Deadline for submitting your challenge

July 23 (or sooner): Receiving message if your challenge is approved by the Course Coordinator

September 1-4: Matching phase

September 1: Student teams rank the challenges

September 3 (by 12pm): Challenge owners rank the student teams

September 4 (afternoon): Matches are communicated

September 7-9: Kick-off meeting with your team

October 20-23, 9:00 – 17:00: Final presentations

Information for students

We're happy to have you on board 👋

This will happen next 👇

Once you registered your team, get together (offline or online) with your team asap, to discuss which challenges you want to work on and why, and submit this selection. Deadline is September 1.

Subsequently, the participating organizations will rank the teams that want to work on their challenge on September 3 (in the morning).

Finally, our platform will generate and share the team-challenge matches on September 4 (afternoon).

Once you're matched to a challenge, schedule a kick-off meeting with the company representative on September 7-9. (☝️Use this template)

In case you have questions about then use of the platform, feel free to use the chat (purple thingy bottom right).

Key details

Open on Master Challenge