Closing the gap between problem domains and software development

The School is focusing on the problems of communication between software developers and other project stakeholders (customers/users/domain experts) during software development process. We consider this communication as a flow, i.e. a process unfolding from an initial idea to a successful product. Software project stakeholders are in reality different persons: they have different backgrounds, ways of thinking, and areas of expertise. One of the main challenges of software development projects is to find a common language for all project stakeholders. Misunderstanding is the one of the main reasons of failure of software projects.

The main focus of the School is Open Data. The topic has been chosen as a problem domain due to increasing activities and initiatives around Open Data in the world and, in particular, in Russia.  There are hundreds of research papers being published on the topic; legislative initiatives and software solutions are being developed in many countries (with the USA and the UK as leaders); numerous communities, standards, institutes and research groups are being created. Among other things, in the course of the 2013 G8 summit Russia pledged to make its data in various fields as open as possible ensuring its availability to the global community and online services. At present, efforts are being made to publish the data of a number of government bodies in machine-readable formats. The Russian federal open data portal is under preparation.

The School will offer introductory lectures on open data as well as cover development technologies and the current situation with open data in Russia and Finland. One of the leading research teams on Open Data in Russia (under the direction of D.I. Muromtsev, ITMO University) will take part in the School.  Also lecturers and researchers from Lappeenranta University of Technology (Finland), St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University and St. Petersburg State University will give presentations.  One day of the School will be held at EMC: their staff will talk about the relation between big business data and open data, and about technologies for development of mobile services in the field. Some lectures will be delivered in English.

The quality of open data is a special topic of the School.  Students will be offered group assignments to estimate the quality of Russian and EU open data resources. The groups will report their results as presentations at the end of the School.

Students who take interest in the subject will have an opportunity to participate in a joint research project by St. Petersburg State University, ITMO University and Lappeenranta University of Technology as well as in the contest on St. Petersburg open data application development, which is to be launched in the spring of this year under the umbrella of the St. Petersburg government’s committee for informatisation and telecommunication together with EMC and Microsoft.

Here is the school program.