ITI8740

Course: ITI8740 Software Development Team project
Course alias: ITX8522 Software Entrepreneurship Project
Lecturer: Martin Verrev
Language: Estonian/English
Credit Points: 12 ECT
Contact: martin.verrev ätt taltech.ee, ICT-422
Date, time, location: Thursdays, 16:00-19:15, U06-209
Teams channel: ITI8740/ITX8522 Team Project (2025), regitration code: itc8jau
Moodle: https://moodle.taltech.ee/course/view.php?id=36194
Course archive: https://courses.cs.taltech.ee/pages/ITI8740_2024

Primary Goals

The primary purpose of the goal is to give an experience of analysing, specifing, developing and documenting a a real life business problem. Also to organize a teamwork and apply agile development methods to solve said problem.

After the course you ...
- ... have an understanding of methods, tools and approaches that can be used when initiating a new startup or in-house project in established organization.
- ... formulated a problem statement and validated it on a real target audience.
- ... built a Minimal Viable (Lovable) Product that solves said problem.

Lectures

Week 1: Introduction. Painkillers, Vitamins, Candy.

Slides

Week 2: Presentation of ideas. Team formation

Slides

Home Assignment (September 11)

- Please think of the problem you want to solve and be ready to present it in 90 seconds.
- Check slides from Lecture 1 for guidance.
- Write down the answer to questions on slide 23 from lecture 1.
- Do not overthink - pick something you would like to do and what is also viable.
- Also upload it here: https://moodle.taltech.ee/mod/assign/view.php?id=814000

Week 3: Introduction to Lean Startup

Lecture: Lecture Slides
Practice session: Lean Canvas Intro

Home Assignment (September 18)

Have a kick-off meeting and set up project environment. See slides from Lecture 2, pages 29..30 for instructions.

Week 4: Minimal Viable/Lovable Product

Lecture: TBC
Practice session:TBC

Home Assignment (September 25)

Find at least 5 similar companies, applications or ventures as your project. Good starting points would be Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/, TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/ or Reddit. Describe for each of them, what they do well, what could be copied and what could be improved. Do not forget to add the URLs. If possible complete the assignment before weekly meeting with supervisor. Save the results as PDF and upload here: https://moodle.taltech.ee/mod/assign/view.php?id=826158

Completing the Course

By the end of the course:

• MVP has been completed and is usable by external users.
• User testing has been completed on MVP, real feedback.
• Spoken at least with 1 real customer, attempted seed funding.
• Figured out and validated pricing model.
• ...
• Have compiled project documentation.

Evaluation

• 91 < score -- grade 5 (excellent)
• 81 < score < 90 -- grade 4 (very good)
• 71 < score < 80 -- grade 3 (good)
• 61 < score < 70 -- grade 2 (satisfactory)
• 51 < score < 60 -- grade 1 (acceptable)

score ≤ 50 -- a student has failed the course