Project Needed

lennyd · 25-09-2013 9:10pm #1

I am a student in NUIG and as part of my Msc in Information Systems Management am required to complete a major project. The project can take many forms e.g.
- Re-design/enhancement of an existing system for a client organisation.
- Develop a system from scratch

I am working as part of a team of four, so essentially the client will have four people working for free. The project would take approximately 6 - 7 months. If anyone has a project that they would like us to undertake or know of a client (be it a charity, start up etc) please pm me. Thanks.

freetoall · 25-09-2013 9:13pm

When will you need to start this project by?

Graham · 25-09-2013 9:15pm

It may be worth mentioning the skill set the group currently has along with any additional skills they hope to acquire.

lennyd · 25-09-2013 9:40pm

We would be hoping to starting by sometime next week or at least have a fair idea of what we will be working on. At the moment we have some knowledge of Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Visual Basic and MySQL. We will be hoping to add to our skill set as the course progresses to include ASP.NET, PHP, CMS, JAVA. As this is a conversion course we do not expect to be whizz kids (but who knows!?). We will be working extremely hard and will take the project very seriously.

KonFusion · 26-09-2013 1:21am

Why not undertake your own project and do something open source, rather than doing so for a commercial entity?

lennyd · 26-09-2013 8:56am

Thanks Konfusion, but that's our brief. You would think in these times it shouldn't be too difficult to find an organisation that would want something done for nothing.:) We've emailed some prospective clients so hopefully something will come out of that.

ChRoMe · 26-09-2013 9:01am

lennyd wrote: »

Thanks Konfusion, but that's our brief. You would think in these times it shouldn't be too difficult to find an organisation that would want something done for nothing.:)

Its definitely going to cost your client, maybe not directly in financial terms, but the time requirement for them would be quite substantial. However you do have the comfort of knowing that it won't ever be used, so the stakes are lower.

lennyd · 26-09-2013 9:21am

Why would you think it wouldn't be used? Many of last years projects were, most in fact. Thanks for your helpful post.

ChRoMe · 26-09-2013 9:23am

lennyd wrote: »

Why would you think it wouldn't be used? Many of last years projects were, most in fact. Thanks for your helpful post.

I was working on the assumption that you will not be providing support once the academic project is completed, apologies if this was incorrect. So at the very least it won't be considered mission critical.

fergalr · 26-09-2013 6:22pm

You say that you are skilled enough to create something of value that can actually be used.

If that is the case, why work for free for someone else for 6 months?

If your services are free, whoever you give them to probably won't value them as much as if they had to pay you. Getting paid for something is a good heuristic to ensure that you are actually building something valuable.

Why not build a core piece of tech for a potential new startup you might start?
Try something that might be risky, but would be valuable if it succeeded.

You say that your brief is to work for others - but have you actually talked to whoever set the project, and e.g. argued that it'd be a better learning experience to do something for yourselves?

Project Needed

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