Teacher @ University of Caen

Since 2018 I teach agile project management in University Of Caen Normandy

Logo of University of Caen
Logo of University of Caen

Software creativity: Create your startup

The Software Creativity course is a special course because it brings together two different classes, usually Master's students in Computer Science and Marketing students. I lead this course with Jean Luc Lambert, Michael Poifol and Jérémie Julou.

First, the participants are grouped in teams around several projects brought by the students themselves.

For 2 months, they will work on this project. Starting from a problem or a project idea, their goal is to create a startup with a business model and a functional prototype, ready to be put in the hands of users. We act as a coach to help them quantify the interest of their project, identify their future users, find a viable business model and help them design a working prototype ready to be presented to their market.

On my side, I work with students to teach them the notion of a Minimal Viable product , As well as the best way to build a working prototype as quickly as possible.

Generally, to be faster, we use no code tools like Adalo or Bubble.

At the end, students present their project in front of an investor jury composed of professionals specialized in business creation and management. They also participate in a crowdfunding event where business angel recruited especially for this occasion will be able to invest in their project by spending a fictitious €25K.

To give them a grade, half of the points will be given by the jury of investors, the other half will be awarded according to the amount raised during the crowdfunding event.

Some of our students decided after this course to continue their entrepreneurial project.

Project Management: The customer-developer relationship

I teach with Jean Luc Lambert to Computed Science students how to manage a project and have a good customer-developer relationship.

The main message is: A successful project starts with a thorough understanding of the customer's needs.

This teaching is divided into several stages:

  1. The customer explains their need but some information is missing! Students must ask the right questions in order to understand the customer's entire need and expectations.
  2. Students list and prioritise features in a .
  3. Then they draw a very simple wireframe by using Marvel App.
  4. They create a Trello to organize the development team. I challenge them on the technical feasibility and push them to discuss a simple and viable solution. This is like step
  5. Everything is ready, the project is now ready to be developed and we are sure that we have understood what the client wants.

During this teaching, we acted as customers who know nothing about computer science.