Good practices in requirements, project and risk management. A case study in educational IT project

It seems that nowadays schools do not keep up with the times. Recent studies have highlighted that students’ needs are not being met and they are not prepared well enough for future study and/or work. The lack of the possibility to conduct their own experiments (e.g. physics experiments similar to those that should be conducted in physics laboratories at schools) and learning from mistakes result in young people not being able to draw their own conclusions (cause-and-effect thinking) led Gdańsk University of Technology to decide to do something about this problem by designing and constructing a set of virtual educational aids – so-called e-experiments. To avoid the common problems that defeated a lot of IT products, they prepared procedures in accordance with the best practices of software engineering. The present paper describes the process of the e-experiments development, paying special attention to the requirements, project and risk management. The authors try to prove that by not running away from difficult matters, such as careful planning and risk analysis, success can and will be achieved.