Monday sees the start of the next iteration of the group projects with real-world clients that was started last summer. In many ways those projects worked ok. We delivered usable products to clients and we are still working with one of them in ongoing work. What didn’t work so well were the engineering aspects of the group projects. This year the MSc group project focus will be on those: pair programming, test driven development, source control and continuous integration. We’ll also use a kanban approach alongside the evo and scrum-like work patterns to ensure that the students stay focused on the flow of work through the system and keep up a steady pace of delivery.

Unlike last year where we had several local clients, and an open source project, this year we have one local firm wanting to explore using ruby and rails to develop projects, while another is working with the Small Isles Community Council, to develop web applications for them to use to help build their communities, and another is an open source application to be developed for Survival International to help manage their media collections.