YourSoftWare is a great platform provided by RMIT to its students and I must commend the effort and support provided by Astrid and RMIT university in tailoring the course and our learning to the particular realities of the real world industry work experience.

I found this project course to be highly beneficial, as this course not only provided me with a great opportunity to get first hand industry experience but it also gave me additional knowledge/skill levels that I absorbed from my fellow team members and challenged myself to learn and use them in real project scenarios.

Being a Project Leader, I found this course to be one of the most useful portions of the entire program, simply because this course has equipped me with a unique combination of knowledge, skills and experience in project management, instilling in me ability to conceptualize, understand and relate strategic goals to operational aspects of the business resulting in providing me with an edge over other fresh postgraduates.

The course also helped me hone my strengths and weakness, analytical, problem solving, interpersonal communication skills, with the ability to develop working relationships with individual at all levels which is of great value in acquiring a job.

Astrid’s personable and professional approach is consistent and greatly appreciated; all my expectations were met and exceeded. I would recommend the course without hesitation for all aspiring Software Engineers.

In this project we did learn lots of things from which we can gain benefits, such as team work, communication skills and the ability to solve problems, and so on. Moreover we learned more techniques about particular areas in a similar way to studying course work. Another important thing is we gained working experience in real industry that will help us to step into society. Through the project we have learned how industry works and the way staff perform jobs. That will make us less nervous when we truly enter a company. These things we cannot learn from course work and gives us an advantage from other competitors. I will always remember that I had this fabulous experience.

This project definitely increased my confidence in technical and non-technical aspects of designing and developing a commercial product. The project working environment relatively reflected the same atmosphere I could perceive in a company. So I have a fairly clear picture of what benefits and pitfalls exist in a corporate environment and how to tackle some of these more professionally.

All our team members got along with each other well. We gave and got positive help when anyone was in trouble, like development skills or certain knowledge of new software. We had our roles defined clearly at the beginning and so everyone knew what to do and when to do it.. This project was successful; we met the deadlines and delivered the product as expected. The experience was valuable. I had the chance to look at how real software is developed and a chance to practice what we had learned so far. I have learned from this project and in future will try to avoid the issues we encountered.

There were four main reasons that contributed to the success of our project; the iterative approach, the team effort, adherence to the testing schedule and scope management. After a shaky start the team realised the importance of working together with a common goal and how to achieve it. The trust level amongst the team definitely increased and members were open to receiving feedback from each other. The importance of testing was never undermined and the team ensured that the issue of scope creep never arose. All the requirements that came in from the client were properly reviewed and only if technically feasible and if they could be accommodated in the schedule were they included. In the end if was a very rewarding experience. The whole process will help fresh graduates like me, in stepping into the real world armed with knowledge, experience and confidence.

In an overview, team work was the most essential part of a project, and this is the most precious lesson I had from the project. Just as an old Chinese idiom said, the most solid fort is ruined not from the outside but from the inside, a successful project firstly relies on reliable team work. This project is entirely different from all the individual assignments that I have done and got very convincing results. RUP is another precious lesson I had. This methodology gives me a view of real world work, how we can develop effectively, how we can guarantee the quality and manage the schedule. Now I understand that the plan, management and governance are important to a project, not just technology and programmers. I really got the understanding of analysis and design, and their importance to projects.

The project allowed me to try out different hats in software engineering. I worked as a Requirements Analyst, Database Analyst, Developer, Architect and Tester in the project. This exposed me to the different roles in the project, and allowed me to choose the roles which I would prefer to pursue in my career. Overall the project was a success because all of us learnt to work together and adapt to and adopt the new technologies.

This project has been a good learning step for me before facing the real world. It really helped me to understand the complete SDLC which involves various steps like documentation, design, coding, testing and deployment. It also helped me to improve my confidence to face people and raised my communication level. The best part of the project work was the way it was structured, which allows individuals to think as a team. I would really rate it as equivalent to any other commercial project. It enabled us to be in contact with the industry people which would really help us to grow our professional network. As for potential students of CS&IT, I would recommend this project as a must do.

It is a great experience to do this project. In the beginning I was a little bit worried about it, because we didn’t have much relevant business knowledge and we needed to use a new programming language. Thanks to our sponsor’s help and all the team members’ hard work we delivered it on time with success. Although it’s only a 16 week project I learned a lot from it. Besides the new language and business knowledge, I gained real project experience including how to work in a team and how to deal with the sponsor. And I made good friends with my team mates. I also know more about myself. In all, I am very glad that I have been involved in this project.

The experience of the project is unique, lessons learned from the course are valuable and the opportunity provided by the result of the project is appreciated and could not be forgotten. The experience of working with team members from different backgrounds gave me an understanding of different work attitudes and cultures. Lessons such as how to practice RUP and work under pressure prepared me with the ability to handle challenges unexpected before. The opportunity from this subject to enter the IT industry is excellent.

The project has given us a good overview of various aspects to be considered when doing one. It is very close to a commercial project and especially as we went through a phase of live deployment. Our application was also marketed and a few clients are interested in the application we developed. So this is a very good sign and has made us feel more confident – I do see the difference in my confidence levels before and after the project. Overall it was a valuable experience and I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone who wishes to do a project.

Overall an amazing experience. The project gave us an opportunity to learn tools like SVN, Perl, and Catalyst etc. It also provided good knowledge of documentation like the charter, requirements etc. We learned about banking and the financial market which I think will be helpful in finding a good job. Working with people from different nationalities gives me a lot of exposure and opportunity to learn from them. In coding everyone had a different style but in the end we achieved the same thing. Looking at different coding styles gave me an opportunity to learn and judge good or better ways of doing things.

I completed a two years Masters in IT degree at RMIT University and as a part of the course I did a six months project in my final semester that was a very rich experience towards understanding the commercial work environment.

I had done a project called CredCap for Bankology that was a credit risk application for banks. We were a team of six members who were able to learn the Basel Accord that was used by banks for Credit Risk calculation and also several other banking terminologies. Astrid Bauers- our project manager was a great motivation and a continuous support without whom the project might have been impossible and our project sponsor Howie was a very approachable and dedicated person as well. This project meant a lot to me when I graduated and started attending interviews; it was recognized as an experience before an actual experience, that is being able to face the team environment and the team dynamics and target dates and schedules before an actual work experience. I would say it should be compulsory for students doing a two year course to have a complete understanding of all that they have done through out the course by completing it with a project as this one.

This course has been a great opportunity for me to get hands on experience in Australian IT market, delivering industry standard software and gaining a crucial 6 months of IT experience during my masters. This bought me above the par of other students who were studying in the university in terms of Australian IT industry culture and knowledge. In this course we carried out our project using Rationale Unified Process Software development methodology which was a new thing to learn and also to manage and develop the Software Development documents which I felt was of tremendous importance.

This course also developed my all-round personality by making me participate in different seminars and activities and improved my client relationship management ability by providing us an opportunity to have direct client interaction and handle related issues and risks.

Being a Team Leader and then Technical Lead I was loaded with lots of responsibilities which I haven’t learnt elsewhere. This also enriched my Team leading ability and Project management knowledge.

Finally these things were not possible without the great support and help from our Project Manager and of course our university.

I have been studying IT in schools for more than 6 years, 2 years in Australia. However, I had never had a chance to be involved in a real industry project in Australia and get some hands-on experience. YourSoftware provided me with a precious opportunity to work on an industry project in which I not only enhanced my technical skills but also learned how to deal with human issues such as team dynamics and customer relationship management. In the past four months, I have been working with other postgraduate students and learned how to use formal software engineering methodologies to control every single aspect of our developing process. Those methodologies have played a very important role in guaranteeing the success of our team work.

After successfully completing the project, I feel that I am already one step ahead of other students who did not pick this project because the experience and knowledge that I have learned will help me successfully converting myself from a fresh graduate to an industry software developer.

This industry-based program provides us with a very good opportunity to learn how to work in a real corporate environment. For our project, we spent half of the time at university where we learned theoretical stuff and we also had guest lecturers and meetings to communicate with other group members for exchange of learning. For the other half of the time, we worked in the sponsoring company as their employees, which offered us a valuable chance to gain hands-on skills and adopt practical approaches to work in reality.

The project we engaged in was to build a CRM system, which is one of the most sought-after enterprise tools in the current market. It is quite interesting and challenging. This program is really a good course to prepare students for starting their career path.