Building a Winning Team

The most important part of any Imagine Cup project is the team.

Software development has become more of a cross-disciplinary effort. Today's developers are working alongside marketers, business managers, user experience designers, system architects, network specialists, usability experts, social-media managers, and many other roles. If you're studying programming in school and you imagine you'll spend your career just working with other programmers, you're probably wrong: with the rise of app stores and software startups, programming is just one of several critical functions in making a great project succeed.

And consider this: for many small teams, the programmer may also be the business manager, the marketer, the UX designer, and so on. Certainly, the more you know about those other roles the more successful you'll be in every job you do because you will be knowledgeable and ready to collaborate.

We wanted to recognize this in the 2014 Imagine Cup season and we're doing that in two big ways.

The first way is our Software Development Lifecycle Challenges. These three contests are designed to focus on "soft skills" such as communications, persuasion, business planning, user research, and project management. From the Pitch Video Challenge to the Project Blueprint Challenge to the User Experience Challenge, we are asking your Imagine Cup team to reach beyond coding. We want you to learn about and embrace these other critical roles because we believe they will make your project, and your career, much more successful.

The second way we're recognizing the importance of cross-disciplinary teams this year is by adding a new element to our rules: associates. If you haven't read about associate members in our official rules, please do so now. But in brief, associates are students who are not part of your core team but who contribute their specialized knowledge in areas such as marketing, UX design, music and sound, business planning, and so on. By reaching outside of the programming department of your school and meeting students in other areas, you will learn a lot and your project will be substantially better. And those associates will get an amazing experience for their resume that will help them get that first great job out of school.

Of course, you don't have to get associates to help you. You may have room on your four-person team to bring on someone like that into your core roster of team members. Or you and your fellow student developers may tackle some or all of these roles yourself.

We know that Imagine Cup students are special. Like devs in any small startup, you do a lot more than just code. You're coming up with big ideas, identifying your potential users, and crafting an experience. With the right skills, or the right help, or both, you can build a winning team, make your Imagine Cup project amazing, and graduate from school with something to show every employer you meet.

The right team can change your life. Find yours today!

 

John Scott Tynes
Imagine Cup Competition Manager
Microsoft Student Developers

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2013
  great ...
• Anonymous
  December 21, 2013
  great ...
• Anonymous
  December 22, 2013
  哇！！！！
• Anonymous
  December 22, 2013
  great
• Anonymous
  December 22, 2013
  nice
• Anonymous
  December 24, 2013
  cool
• Anonymous
  December 24, 2013
  amazing!
• Anonymous
  December 24, 2013
  0W0!
• Anonymous
  December 24, 2013
  NICE!
• Anonymous
  December 25, 2013
  哇！
  • Anonymous
    December 31, 2013
    怎么把队友拉进来啊
  • Anonymous
    December 31, 2013
    怎么把队友拉进来啊
• Anonymous
  December 25, 2013
  wa oh
• Anonymous
  December 25, 2013
  i need a team
  • Anonymous
    December 25, 2013
    i need you
    • Anonymous
      January 05, 2014
      I want to be part of team too. Need a team.
    • Anonymous
      January 05, 2014
      I want to be part of team too. Need a team.
      • Anonymous
        September 24, 2014
        will u join me
    • Anonymous
      February 06, 2014
      invite mwa sal kon,kesk u atend
  • Anonymous
    March 21, 2014
    me too :/
  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2014
    Need a team
    • Anonymous
      September 24, 2014
      will u join me
• Anonymous
  December 26, 2013
  super
• Anonymous
  December 26, 2013
  Nice
• Anonymous
  December 26, 2013
  nice
• Anonymous
  December 27, 2013
  nice
• Anonymous
  December 28, 2013
  soga
• Anonymous
  December 28, 2013
  What a cool definition for team!
• Anonymous
  December 28, 2013
  niubility
• Anonymous
  December 30, 2013
  china ruanjian 2ban peng
• Anonymous
  December 30, 2013
  great
• Anonymous
  December 30, 2013
  I can not gree more.
• Anonymous
  December 31, 2013
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  December 31, 2013
  how to pull my teammates?
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2014
    à partir de leur adresse mail
• Anonymous
  December 31, 2013
  怎么把队友拉进来啊
• Anonymous
  December 31, 2013
  怎么这么多中国人？
• Anonymous
  January 01, 2014
  Wat a great work
• Anonymous
  January 02, 2014
  Kinda sad I don't have a team, very few people in Ghana care about programming, it's just the games and stuff.
  • Anonymous
    February 06, 2014
    kinda c l'afrique
  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2014
    will u join me help me in coding and making games?
  • Anonymous
    September 25, 2014
    will u join me help me in coding and making games?
• Anonymous
  January 26, 2014
  Awesome.....................
• Anonymous
  January 26, 2014
  Awesome.....................
• Anonymous
  February 05, 2014
  怎么这么多中国人???
• Anonymous
  February 06, 2014
  super
• Anonymous
  February 06, 2014
  ...great encouragemrnt, thanks!
• Anonymous
  February 12, 2014
  shum i de e mire une them qe eshte kenaqesi qe jam pjese e imagine Cup(Great idea, I say that is my pleasure that I am part of Imagine Cup ) I need member this is my team and this is multinational team below is the link.http://imaginecup.com/Team/Index/43674#?fbid=HIXwd8aWVjw
  • Anonymous
    September 11, 2014
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    September 25, 2014
    i want to be in ur team