I would like to run a project with GiPHouse
In order to have our students work on your project there some steps have to be taken.
Our projects are carried out during the second semester (please check the website of the university for the academic calendar). During the first semester a student assistants will look for suitable projects for the students to work on, they can be contacted on directors [AT] giphouse.nl. During this period it's possible to contact the student assistant to see whether there is room for your project(s).
In the first contact the student assistant will check with you whether the project is suitable for the course. If this is the case, we expect a project description from you. This description can then be used for students to express preference for certain projects. This description should contain the following (an example project description is provided below):
- About one paragraph about the client (company), what is it that you do?
- Information on the project, what is the project about? What is the purpose of the project?
- Necessary skills, what programming language will be used? (Optional)
- Contact information, who are you? How can the project group reach you?
After an agreement is reached on the project description, the contracts can be signed and the project is ready for the spring semester.
Example project description
GiPHouse
GiPHouse is a virtual software company completely run by students. For more than 25 years now, GiPHouse has provided a platform in which real projects for real companies can be created. Furthermore, it has been a learning platform for students who want to get real life software development experience.
The project
At the moment, GiPHouse uses several different systems (e.g. G Suite and Github) to manage and monitor its projects and administration. The goal of this project is to create a more efficient method to administer the projects and student data. At this moment we have a system running on giphouse.nl but we still have to do a lot of manual work in other systems. We would like to automate as many of those tasks as possible.
With the registration of students we already gain a lot of information of users (e.g. Github accounts, mail addresses). Right now we have to manually create repositories for the teams and add every user manually, we would like to do this automatically once we have everyone divided in teams. The same goes for functionalities of G Suite that we use. Depending on how long this takes, we would also like to look into ways to fairly divide the students into teams using our system.
In this project there will be a big focus on code quality. At the moment, the website has a high code quality and if we integrate this project into our live environment we seek the same level of quality.You can take a look into the current website here: github.com/Giphouse/Website.
Skills
Experience with Django (a popular web framework in Python) is a plus.
Contact information
Name: A B
E-mail: a@b.com
Phone/WhatsApp/Telegram: 06-12345678
While the project is running
There are some things that you should be aware of when you would like to have a project with GiPHouse, these will be explained below. If you have any questions feel free to contact us (directors [AT] giphouse.nl). Please make sure you have read the bullets below.
- We expect you to be available at the start of the project for an initial meeting, the student assistant you had contact with at the start will notify when this is. During the project we expect you to be available for the team. There is not a set window for this, but you are expected to be available for questions/discussion at least once every two weeks. The exact frequency and moments for this can be discussed with the team of students.
- While the students are expected to deliver an end product that you are satisfied with, they also have to work on several aspects of software development in order to be able to pass the course. This means that students still have to work on aspects that may seem superfluous like tests, making sure the software is maintainable, and documentation.
- The students are also expected to present their progress to the teachers of the course and to other students of the courses. This means that it is not possible to enforce an NDA that would not allow this to happen. Of course the content of these presentations can be discussed with the team to ensure that no confidential information is presented.
- GiPHouse will provide students with their development environment. This means that students have GitHub services and AWS servers available to them to make sure they can properly work on their product. If there are any issues, for example there was a security vulnerability and the server was corrupted with a Bitcoin miner, the server may be shut down temporarily. This leads to difficulties with development, so please make sure your product is secure if you share anything with your team.
- GiPHouse is working with students and not with paid professionals. This means that we cannot guarantee that every project will be completely up to par with the customers' wishes. By emphasising good communication between students and the customers, we try to give the projects a successful conclusion. We know from experience that most projects are finished or mostly finished and customers are predominantly satisfied with us.
- While nearly every project is considered a great success by our clients, it's always possible that something is not going the right way. If there are any problems along the way (e.g. you feel that the final product will not be satisfactory), please contact the student assistant as soon as possible.
Finalizing the project
- At the end of the project we have some questions that we hope you can answer. These questions help the teachers with the gradings of the students. Topics that are covered are the quality of the product, your satisfaction with the product and the way of working, and questions on you collaboration.
- The students are expected to reach an agreement with you on how the product should be handed over to you. We urge you to think about this in advance to ensure you can actually use the product after the team is done working on it.
Costs
Running a project within GiPHouse (spring semester) is possible for only €350,-. This is a fixed price and the money will mainly be used for project-related costs like printing, travelling and administrative costs. We also need to occasionally upgrade or buy new hardware. Note that this money is not used to pay students for their work: they get a reward for their work in the form of credits.