Royal Holloway, University of London - Code Groovers

Established in May 2017, Code Groovers operates with a governance structure (e.g. CEO, Board of Directors, university stakeholders), well-established business processes and a technology infrastructure that are aligned to the ones typically found in an industry setting. The Code Groovers core mission consists of the following pillars:

1. Provide students with the opportunity to work on real-life, commercial software development projects.
2. Create high-quality software that offers excellent value for money solutions to clients, such as the department itself, other university entities and third parties.
3. Equip students with important extra-curriculum knowledge (e.g. in technologies and methodologies) and skills (e.g. transferable skills) that are relevant in the professional world.
4. Inform teaching in the department, e.g. via better aligning the curriculum to the changing industry expectations and by providing real case studies that are used in a number of modules.
5. Facilitate the development of a vibrant ecosystem of academics, students, industry partners, professional bodies and the wider community that promotes collaboration and knowledge exchange in technology and innovation.

Over the last 2.5 years, Code Groovers has successfully delivered more than a dozen projects for several clients, ranging from full-stack software development, to mobile apps and proof of concepts. For example, our latest achievement was the development of the first public database of worldwide explosive violence incidents, a project that was explicitly acknowledged by the university and the client.

Code Groovers has also contributed to the organisation of two hackathons at Royal Holloway, one of which was the first hackathon ever organised by the university. Moreover, it has organised a number of events on students’ entrepreneurship and has provided direct, real-life, coursework input to two undergraduate modules.

With high levels of overall students’ satisfaction and interest in joining Code Groovers, future plans include the steady increase of our delivery capacity, the further growth of clients and projects portfolio and the further engagement in teaching-related and entrepreneurship activities and initiatives.

Further information is available at codegroovers.com