How AMOS Projects Create Value for Industry Partners

In an AMOS project, students program an open source software with an industry partner as the provider of the idea and feedback. Effectively, the industry partner acts like a customer in a Scrum project. Students love our AMOS projects because it teaches something needed by industry (agile methods and open source) in an as-real-as-it-gets setting (hurray! industry!)

Industry partner love our AMOS projects as well, because it puts them in touch with students. There is almost no industry partner who would not like to recruit smart students for their business. Moreoever, our students are innovative with quite a different perspective from your typical business outlook. Finally, in AMOS, students develop software that can be useful for the industry partner, in particular if the industry partner succeeds in hiring one or two of the project’s developers to ensure the open source software can be used internally.

We require that students develop open source software. Hence, the industry partner needs to identify a tool or component they need, but that they view as not-competitively differentiating. (Otherwise, open source software doesn’t make sense.) We choose a permissive open source license that allows the industry partner to continue with proprietary development of the component, if so desired.

You can get an idea of past projects that fit this bill in our AMOS project category on this site. Enjoy! And if you have questions, please be in touch.