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, 14:00-17:15, MEK-122
Teams channel: ITI8740 (2026) Team Project, registration code: iu6nr2y
Moodle: https://moodle.taltech.ee/course/view.php?id=37860
Course archive: https://courses.cs.taltech.ee/pages/ITI8740_2025

Primary Goals

The primary purpose of the goal is to give an experience of discovering, specifying, developing, and documenting a real-life business problem. Also to organize 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 an established organization.
- ... formulated a problem statement and validated it with a real target audience.
- ... built a Minimal Viable (Lovable) Product that solves said problem.

Lectures

Week 1: Introduction. Choosing a Problem to Solve

Slides

Week 2: Presentation of Ideas. Team Formation

Slides

Home Assignment for Week 2

- 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 36 from lecture 1.
- Do not overthink - pick something you would like to do and what is also viable.
- Also upload it to Moodle. The upload link will be here shortly.

Week 3: Introduction to Lean Startup

- Lecture: Slides
- Practice session: identifying problem worth solving and introduction to Lean Canvas

Home Assignment for Week 3

- Have a kick off meeting with your team
- Set up environments and fill in project wiki (See slides for lecture 2)

Week 4: Minimal Viable/Lovable Product

- Lecture Slides
- Practice session: Filling the canvas

Home Assignment for Week 4

- Read Chapter 1 "Running Lean Roadmap" from "Running Lean" book. The free version can be found at https://danielpandza.wordpress.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/running-lean.pdf. Be ready for in-classroom test.
- Evaluate if your idea is worth solving. Document findings in project wiki (Page: Idea Evaluation). Complete this by Monday 23:59
- Find how currently the problem you are focusing on is being solved. 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. Document findings in project wiki (Page: Competitors). Complete this by Monday 23:59

Reading Materials

• Book: Running Lean by Ash Maurya. https://danielpandza.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/running-lean.pdf

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