2017 IEEE/ACM 4th International Workshop on Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice (SER&IP)
Fifteen Years of Industry and Academia Partnership:
Lessons Learned from a Brazilian Research Group
Rossana M. C. Andradea , Valéria Lelli, Rute N. S. Castro and Ismayle S. Santosb
Group of Computer Networks, Software Engineering, and Systems (GREat),
Federal University of Ceará (UFC)
Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil
Email: {rossana,valerialelli,rute,ismaylesantos}@great.ufc.br
Abstract—In Brazil, software industry and academia have
formed partnerships more often due to funding agencies and
tax incentives originated, for example, from Brazil’s Informatics
Law. Like in many relationships, each party brings different
experiences, and goals to be achieved. However, for a partnership
to be successful, it is necessary to learn how to deal with these
differences, respecting the limits of each party and fostering
mutual growth. The aim of this paper is to present challenges
and lessons learned faced by the GREat research group at the
Federal University of Ceará over the past 15 years of partnership
with industry. Besides, we present the GREat Business process for
projects with industry and how the software engineering evolved
in our group within these projects. We believe this report can
help other industry and academic partnerships around the world
not only because our main partners are international companies
but also because what we have learned from practice is globally
applied.
Keywords-software engineering; software industry; industry-
university partnership
I. I NTRODUCTION
With no loss of generality, we can compare the partnership
between industry and academia as a relationship in which
each party brings different experiences and goals. These
differences make the relationship attractive but, at the same
time, challenging. With innovation and globalization currently
playing a fundamental role in the economy, industries seek in
the universities the knowledge necessary for the evolution of
their businesses. Universities, conversely, seek in the industries
an excellent opportunity to apply the technology and advanced
research developed by their professors and students.
Particularly, the Brazilian government has decided to invest
in policies that encourage university-business relationships,
such as the University-Business Interaction Stimulus Program
in Support of Innovation, also known as the Green and Yellow
Fund[1] (alluding to the colors of the Brazilian flag); the
Science, Technology and Innovation Action Plan for National
Development [2]; the Law of Goodness[3] and the Informatics
Law [4] that give tax incentives for companies that declare
investments in research and innovation; and several call for
proposals from development funding agencies like FINEP1 (a
Brazilian studies and projects financing organization), CNPq
a Researcher
scholarship - DT Level 2, sponsored by CNPq
b PhD Scholarship (MDCC/DC/UFC) sponsored by CAPES
1 http://www.finep.gov.br
978-1-5386-2797-6/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/SER-IP.2017..2
2
(National Council of Technological and Scientific Develop-
ment), CAPES3 (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher
Education Personnel) and State Foundations for Research
Support (in case of the Ceará, its agency is called Funcap4 ).
More specifically, the Informatics Law has contributed to
a closer bond between information technology and commu-
nication industries and Brazilian universities. This law grants
a reduction in the IPI tax (a Brazilian tax on industrialized
products) for companies that invest a percentage of their
revenue in research and development, strengthening the insti-
tutions favored by the law, and the quantitative and qualitative
growth of several research groups over the past decade. Among
these groups, there is our Group of Computer Networks,
Software Engineering, and Systems (GREat)5 , which includes
researchers from Computer Science and Computer Engineer-
ing of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC).
However, despite their complementary motivations to make
partnerships, industry and academia have different interests.
For example, industries do not stimulate the publication of the
results obtained during the joint work on scientific projects,
due to confidentiality, which is against academic interests
once this is one of the evaluation factors for post-graduation
programs and researchers. Consequently, the relationship that
should be a search for symbiosis between the parties can
become an obstinate dispute for different results. Nonetheless,
recognizing and respecting differences reduce the chances of
failure and increase the probability of a successful partnership
and mutual growth.
In the literature, we have found work investigating engineer-
ing practices in industry (e.g., [5]) or discussing the university-
industry collaboration (e.g., [6]). However, there is a lack
of experience reports concerning long-term industry-academic
partnerships. In this context, this article reports the experiences
that GREat/UFC has accumulated over the past 15 years
concerning its partnerships with software industries. The main
focus is to show the challenges that were faced and overcome,
and the lessons learned that made our partnership successful.
Also, we show how that collaboration contributed to the
application and evolution of Software Engineering techniques
2 http://www.cnpq.br
3 http://www.capes.gov.br
4 http://www.funcap.ce.gov.br
5 http://www.great.ufc.br
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within the GREat research group. In this way, we hope to
contribute not only to enable companies and universities to
work together to make the best from their relationships, but
also to help new partnerships to be effective and long-lasting.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II introduces the profiles of GREat and its industry partners.
Section III presents the software engineering evolution within
GREat projects. Section IV describes the GREat Business
Process adopted in the R&D&I projects. The main challenges
faced by GREat are discussed in Section V. Section VI details
the benefits of the partnership with industry and, finally,
Section VII presents the final remarks.
II. PARTNERS P ROFILE
In this section, we present the GREat/UFC and the partner
profiles by highlighting the main goals and the expectations
of both parties.
A. About GREat
GREat is a research group composed of professors, collab-
orating researchers and undergraduate and graduate students
of the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and other Educa-
tion Institutes. It was founded in 2002 within UFC, in the
Department of Computer Science (DC), which is certified by
Informatics Law.
GREat’s mission is to produce qualified researchers to work
in both the academic field and the market in the areas of
computer networks, software engineering, distributed systems,
and multimedia. To do so, GREat researchers operate in two
main activities: in supervising masters and PhDs students, and
in the research and development of technological solutions.
The former happens naturally, since they are inserted in
graduate programs at UFC. The latter is fostered by research
and development and innovation (R&D&I) projects financed
by federal and state funding agencies, by Informatics Law,
or by the own companies. When these projects are undertaken
through the Informatics Law, the FCPC6 (Ceará State Research
and Culture Foundation) is used as co-signer.
B. Profile of associated companies
Companies associated with GREat look for using the tech-
nical and scientific know-how of the group’s members to help
them improving the development processes of their products,
and the development of innovative solutions that allow an in-
crease in productivity. The vast majority of the companies seek
projects involving the development of applications concerning
mobile devices, which is one of our expertises.
These partnerships vary in duration according to the type
of funding. Projects under the Informatics Law last from three
months to one year, with the possibility of being extended. In
the case of funding agencies, the project duration depends on
the call for proposals, and often last between one and three
years. Finally, when the partnership is agreed upon directly
with the company, there is more flexibility in negotiating both
the duration and possible extensions and renovations.
6 http://www.fcpc.ufc.br
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III. S OFTWARE E NGINEERING E VOLUTION IN GRE AT
Since the beginning of GREat in 2002, we followed an
evolution of methods, processes, and techniques used in the
management and development of all projects.
Table I shows a sample of projects in partnership with indus-
try and the evolution of the software engineering techniques
used over the years at GREat. For confidentiality reasons, the
names of the projects were hidden and each row represents a
year and its different projects.
In the beginning, the projects were more focused on well-
defined requirements through a previously established Work
Plan with a predefined schedule and budget. At this point, the
projects used the Waterfall method and were more directed
to the RUP methodology [7], defining an initial architecture,
then an intermediate one, until getting the final architecture
to be in fact implemented. During these phases, the company
provided its document template to model requirements with
use cases and class diagrams.
Over time and with a more maturity level in the projects, the
group began to develop and adopt their document templates
and discuss more carefully the requirements. This led to a
natural shift in development models to the Spiral [8] with a
risk analysis closely monitored by the Industry.
In the last six years, with the advent of Agile Methods,
projects began to use this new option for project development
and management [9]. The team has become now free to discuss
the schedule and requirements with the industrial partner, and
changes are triggered in stand-up meetings. There is also
more feedback and communication from the partner about
requirements and development issues.
Over the last three years, we have been working in the
implantation of the GREat Test Factory. As we show in Table I,
our testing activities were essential “ad hoc” in the beginning,
which means that we did not follow a standard testing process.
Currently, our test factory follows a standard process adherent
to the MRMPS-SW [10]. Indeed, our process encompasses the
quality assurance process and activities related to verification
and configuration management.
Observing all these transitions among models and tech-
niques of software engineering within GREat, we began to
define the Group process models to facilitate understanding
and to organize the inputs and outputs of the GREat processes.
IV. GRE AT B USINESS P ROCESS
As a research group that also operates in R&D&I projects,
our model of organizational structure fits into a projectized
structure [11], in which GREat arranges their activities into
programs and implement them through the projects. To orga-
nize the activities that are performed by different roles in the
GREat projects, we chose to model our activities using the
concept of model business processes.
Initially, the GREat process had been documented in proce-
dures manual. This manual describes the policies, the activities
and the roles that concern the GREat projects. However, the
new partnerships and, consequently, the new projects and the
different rules that govern them require us to standardize that
 TABLE I
E VOLUTION OF S OFTWARE E NGINEERING TECHNIQUES AT GRE AT

Year Projects (#) Software Domain Process Model Testing Process Project Management
2002 1 Mobile Security Waterfall Ad hoc Testing PMBok
2003 3 Mobile Security and Web Applications Waterfall Ad hoc Testing PMBok
2004 2 Mobile Application (Brew and J2ME tech- Waterfall Ad hoc Testing PMBok
nologies) and Web Applications
2005 9 Mobile Application (Brew and J2ME tech- Waterfall Ad hoc Testing PMBok
nologies), Desktop and Web Applications
2006 6 Mobile (J2ME technology), Desktop and Waterfall and RUP Ad hoc Testing PMBok
Web Applications
2007 7 Mobile (J2ME technology), Desktop and Interactive with prototyping Ad hoc Testing PMBok
Web Applications
2008 5 Mobile (J2ME and Flash Lite), Desktop and Spiral and RUP Ad hoc Testing PMBok
Web Applications
2009 3 Mobile (Android), Desktop and Web Appli- Spiral and RUP Ad hoc Testing PMBok
cations
2010 4 Mobile (Android), Desktop and Web Appli- Interactive with prototyping Ad hoc Testing PMBok and Six Sigma
cations
2011 2 Mobile (Android), Desktop and Web Appli- Interactive with prototyping Ad hoc Testing Scrum
cations
2012 6 Mobile (Android) and Web applications Interactive with prototyping Ad hoc Testing Scrum
2013 4 Mobile (Android) and Web applications and Agile and Clean Code Ad hoc Testing Scrum
Natural Processing Language
2014 5 Mobile (Android and Windows Phone) and Agile and Clean Code Ad hoc Testing Scrum
Web applications, Natural Processing Lan-
guage, Security and IoT
2015 5 Mobile ((Android and Windows Phone) and Agile Agile Testing Scrum
Web application, Natural Processing Lan-
guage, Security, IoT and Cloud
2016 2 Mobile (Android) and Web applications Agile Test factory process Scrum and GREat Processes

manual by using a notation more suitable for the business

process. The notation we have used to model our process
is the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN)7 . To
implement the process in the projects, we have used the JIRA
software8 to create the process activities and their flow. The
main sub-process, stakeholders, and activities of the GREat
process are illustrated in Fig. 1. Most of our projects in
partnership with industry are agreed through Informatics Law.
The process starts with the coordinator negotiating the
project scope and its budget with a partner. Then, it is
necessary to write details of the project in a document that we
call Work Plan. This document describes the project activities,
the detailed schedule, and the project budget. Once the work
plan is done, the project proposal must be approved by both
parties (i.e., company and GREat/UFC). All documentation
must be analyzed and approved by the coordinator, and then
it should be sent to the Foundation to be legally analyzed
and approved by all instances involved within the university.
Next, the contract is signed by both parties and the Foundation,
which manages the project budget that must be distributed
according to the resources described in the Work Plan.
Several roles are involved in executing the activities de-
scribed in the Work Plan:
• Project coordinator who is responsible for supervising
the progress of the project, making final decisions re-
garding expenses and showing the main achievements to
the customer;
7 http://www.bpmn.org
8 https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira
• Project manager who plans the technical activities of
the Work Plan and conducts these activities with the
development team, the consultants, and the researchers;
• Product development team represented by the software
engineers;
• Researchers who conducts the research and innovation in
the project (i.e., PhDs and graduate students);
• Administrative sector that is responsible for the procure-
ment management and the elaboration of all legal docu-
mentation required by the university and the foundation.
In our case, this sector also encompasses the Finance and
Human Resources sectors and they manage the project’s
finances (e.g., planning the expenses and the distribution
of resources) and its staff (e.g., recruiting employees and
managing their performance), respectively;
• IT infrastructure is responsible for maintaining the com-
puter networks infrastructure, ensuring the information
security and supporting the purchase of computers hard-
ware and software as well as their maintenance;
• GREat Test Factory9 is a specialized company for the de-
livery of outsourced testing services. The GREat Test Fac-
tory team is composed of specialists from both academic
and industry parties. For example, PhDs with expertise
in Software Testing, certified professional test analysts,
usability experts, software quality experts, graduate and
undergraduate students in Computer Science/Software
Engineering courses;
• Foundation is responsible for managing the project bud-
9 http://fabricadetestes.great.ufc.br

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 Fig. 1. A macro view of the GREat Bussiness Process
get and resources, for example, buying equipment, hiring
human resources and third services; and
• Partners are represented by the companies from the
industry. We had the opportunity to work with several
multinational companies such as LGE, Foxconn, Flex-
tronics, Samsung, and Sony.
V. C HALLENGES AND L ESSONS L EARNED
In this section, we discuss the lessons learned over 15 years
of partnership with industry in R&D&I projects.
A. Speed in Decision-Making
New ways of institutional support to scientific and tech-
nological research activities started to emerge in Brazil,
mainly with funds originating from the National Scientific
and Technological Development Fund (FNDCT). Then, private
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foundations were created. One advantage is that the funds de-
posited in these foundations can be used with more flexibility,
allowing the use of the resources faster than it would be from
universities and public foundations. In this direction, the legal
channels became less bureaucratic and more tractable, favoring
agility at decision making time.
GREat uses a non-profit foundation called FCPC (Ceará
State Research and Culture Foundation) to manage resources
originating in partnerships with industries. FCPC aims sup-
porting projects of research, teaching and extension and insti-
tutional, scientific and technological development of interest
of the Federal University of Ceará. This relationship between
GREat and FCPC has become more mature over the past 15
years, with the implementation of specific and well-defined
procedures concerning project agreements. However, there is
still some directives and policies that end up delaying proce-
dures considered trivial by the businesses, such as purchasing
equipment and books, hiring consultants and human resources,
travels, and laboratory refurbishing.
It is also important to emphasize that all the documents
that should be signed by the parties must be reviewed by the
legal staffs from the foundation and university. Once these
documents are approved, they must be signed by the president
of the foundation and the university rector. Only after that, the
contract is signed by the company’s representative. Thus, this
procedure contributes to slow down the forwarding of projects.
How should the businesses’ time-to-market be heeded with
so much bureaucratic and legal red tape from the foundations
and universities? In our experience, the best way is first to
organize a checklist with all steps and documentation that
is needed, then, from the beginning of the negotiation, to
make all the existing procedures, limitations and due dates
for each of the activities involved in the project very clear to
all parties involved. Once this openness has been established
and accepted, schedule and budget planning must guarantee
that the demands of each party will be observed and that the
project will be concluded successfully. Furthermore, checklists
were defined to indicate all required documentation for each
procedure, avoiding loss of time due to missing or incomplete
documentation. Finally, other followed strategy is to modu-
larize the procedures allowing to perform parallel activities
whenever possible.
Over the period of 15 years using the FCPC as co-signer
of projects, we managed to deal with the speed of decision-
making that the industries require, synchronously with what
the university/foundation can offer.
B. Differences in interests and attitudes
In any partnership, there is always an expectancy to get
results that will contribute to the growth of all parties involved.
For example, industries expect a product from the project
- software, in the case of this article - that eventually will
generate profits and academia expects prototypes, acquisition
of professional experience and mainly scientific advances that
is documented with publications and theses.
In order to reach the scientific publication in this kind of
projects, which deliver results of the partnership with indus-
tries, a large problem faced are non-disclosure agreements
(NDAs) required by most industries to protect hardware and
software knowledge made available during the execution of
the project, and even information obtained during visits or
meeting among the parties.
Industries often show no interest in results such as paper
publications, because first, they can show strategic infor-
mation, they also generate neither productivity metrics nor,
consequently, any profit or competitive advantage. On the
other hand, research support agencies and the Informatics Law
consider the publication of scientific results as a good indicator
of the success of a project. Moreover, publications are an
indicator for the researchers productivity in the academia.
Therefore, to solve this problem of maintaining the confi-
dentiality clauses and at the same time reaching the indicators
of publications, an informal agreement can be done by the
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parties by which all reports (e.g., articles, presentations, and
master and Ph.D. thesis) are previously sent to the companies
involved to be reviewed and authorized prior the publication.
In projects that are not attached to a support agency, identical
procedures are required as well as a prior negotiation with
the industry to make clear what productivity indicators are
required from the universities.
In some cases, the rendering of articles or participation in
prize-winning contests were rejected, due to the confidentiality
clauses. However, over the past 15 years we have learnt how
to publicize relevant contributions to the scientific community,
without violating confidentiality, by concentrating more on the
processes used in the project rather than on the final products,
and by focusing on the management challenges and other
technical issues without mentioning explicitly the results and
eventually the financing companies.
Another problem arising from the confidentiality agree-
ments is the software registration of the tools and applications
developed during such projects. Companies are interested in
protecting the intellectual property of their idea. From the
businesses’ perspective, they are paying to have a product
developed, and most of them would like to have the exclusive
commercial rights to the product. On the other hand, univer-
sities are interested in maintaining the intellectual property
of the product that was developed thanks to their know-how,
albeit with resources obtained through a project in partnership
with industry.
To solve this problem, the projects that develop tools
under confidentiality clauses and which results are subject to
software registration can be registered at Brazilian Institute of
Industrial Property (INPI)10 with a transfer of rights contract.
This contract specifies as authors all those involved in the
construction of the software program, thus maintaining their
intellectual property over the program, but transferring the
commercial rights of usage to the business partner in a
previous percentage negotiated with the parties. So, only the
business partner can release and explore commercial rights
on the developed software in industry-academic collaboration
projects. This is the model we have been following in part-
nerships between GREat/UFC and industries, and which has
allowed us to obtain five software registrations at the INPI,
published in the industrial property magazine over the past
few years.
C. Communication
Problems in communications within the partnership can
start due to different visions. Sometimes, for example, in the
Industry’s eyes, Academia only has theoretical knowledge,
whereas, for Academia, Industry only has practical knowledge.
Thus, when such misleading ideas emerge during partnership
projects, conflicts can happen, and the challenge is to handle
them in a way that both sides feel motivated and can still con-
struct commercial products as a result of the projects. Among
the factors that occurred and hampered communications and
10 http://www.inpi.gov.br
consequently the execution of projects over the past 15 years of
partnerships between GREat/UFC and industries, we describe
the solutions encountered as follows:
• Reallocation of key personnel in charge of the project
at the business side. In this case, the University lacked
the necessary feedback from the business concerning
application requirements, and of activities carried out
until that moment. To solve this case, the project manager
or a technical leader at the university’s side took on the
role of application owner until a business representative
was designated to accompany the project once again;
• Absence or delays in replies from the business about what
was developed. The absence of a reply resulted in delays
in completion of the project and lack of motivation of
the university team. To solve these delays, extensive ne-
gotiations were undertaken between the interested parties
to reach an agreement regarding completing the scope
within a time frame feasible for both sides;
• Changes of the work plan during the execution of the
project. These changes resulted in delays in the project
schedule and additional costs. To reduce the impact of
these changes during the project execution, the solution
adopted was to use agile methods (e.g., Scrum), that pe-
riodically negotiate and align the deliveries expectations.
It is worth noting that the profile of the personnel involved in
projects at the university is heterogeneous, because, besides the
technical activities of software engineering and development,
they often are also involved in research for scientific articles,
and trips to congresses and conferences to get advance ideas
of solutions to the challenges proposed in the projects. In this
way, this personnel differs from Industry personnel, and the
priority allocated to each activity can cause conflicts during
a project. For example, Industry personnel can consider that
is a waste of time when a university team member travels to
participate in a congress, when, in fact, the latter considers
it essential to the project and his/her career. The solution
encountered was to define heterogeneous teams composed by
members hired from the job market (industry personnel), and
undergraduate and graduate students (academic personnel).
In order for the university and industry teams to continue
motivated and not lose confidence in one another, detailed
communications planning is necessary before starting the
project, including meetings at regular intervals among the
leaders, among the teams, and internally within each of the
university and industry teams, in order to synchronize activities
and progress in the development of the project, and also to
prevent potential misunderstandings.
D. Dealing with financial resources
When it comes to dealing with financial resources for
projects conducted in partnership between the university and
industry, we have to mention two important factors that can
have an impact on the success of the partnership.
The first factor is that some companies seek the Univer-
sity because they want specialized personnel with below-
market project cost estimates. This vision crops up because
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the university does not aim at a profit, and so the project
ought to have a lower cost. However, this does not always
happen, mainly because many projects involve technological
innovation that implies in additional costs, such as laboratory
maintenance, equipment purchases, training, and software li-
censes. Although it is possible to enlist undergraduate and
graduate students to decrease the costs, depending on the
scope and duration time, a project cannot be composed only
of students who are part-time.
The second factor is requirements changes during the
project, which most of the time has an impact on additional
costs that face resistance by the partner. There are many ways
of mapping requirements to help understand the domain/scope
of the application to be developed [8], and consequently
to prepare a more detailed schedule. Nonetheless, during the
project, software requirements may evolve due to changes in
the system’s environment, and as the partner develops a better
understanding of its needs. Thus, we always define a buffer in
the project budget to deal with unforeseen issues. We estimate
the value of this buffer based on historical data.
E. Brazilian perspective of research with industry
One of the challenges faced by the researchers during the
execution of projects with industry in Brazil is regarding the
freedom to perform the research. When the main result ex-
pected by the industry partner is the development of software,
the partner often considers the research as a parallel activity
that should not impact the project planning. The role of the
involved researchers is usually as an external consultant, and
not as a necessary resource with a contribution to the final
result of the project, i.e., the developed software. As a result,
the researchers face barriers to perform activities, for example,
case studies to assess the proposed solutions.
As a lesson learned, we observed that to define a research
work plan with practical results for the project is a good
strategy to get the support of the industrial partner. Besides, the
researchers involved in the projects should keep in touch with
the project manager aiming the following objectives: (i) To
“sell” the research by communicating the results (even partial)
obtained and how the project can benefit from these results
(ii) To “find” research opportunities by identifying problems
within the project in which the research can help to solve.
The other challenge we have faced was the Brazilian
economic crisis at the end of 2015. Such crisis affected all
sectors and activities, including academic projects supported
by industry, for example, those under the Informatics Law. . In
GREat/UFC, such crisis has reduced meaningfully the number
of projects and the human resources. However, the highest
impact was on the research team since several research funds
were cut. To maintain the research in our projects, we had
to cut down the costs of the projects through the following
strategies: (i) reduction of the team size by selecting the best
software engineers based on their performance evaluations and
expertise, and according to the project needs; (ii) a higher
collaboration of the graduate students who are supported by
projects research scholarships to perform research and techni-
cal work in the projects; (iii) role accumulation, i.e., several
software engineers had to accumulate more than one role
in the software development process. For example, software
engineers may act as configuration manager and developer.
VI. B ENEFITS FROM THE PARTNERSHIP
Although we have faced several challenges over the past
15 years as we discussed in Section V, the partnership with
industry has provided a “business ecosystem” that encourages
an exchange of knowledge and experience. Indeed, the part-
nership has brought excellent results that motivate both parties
to invest more in it.
Most of our projects with industry met customer’s ex-
pectations by resulting in innovative tools and deliverables,
software registrations and industry awards. Regarding the
benefits for the academia, the researchers have an opportunity
to propose and apply new solutions that result in research
papers published in the proceedings of national and interna-
tional symposiums [9] [12] [13] [14] [15]. Some of these
papers had received academic awards (e.g., the paper [9]
was awarded as one of the best papers of the 25th Brazilian
Symposium on Software Engineering). These achievements
are good indicators that our projects have innovative research.
We have observed that one of the motivations for pro-
fessionals to join our research group is the opportunity to
enter in the Masters and Ph.D. graduate program at UFC.
By contrast, several graduate students have been working in
the R&D&I projects after finishing their studies. Furthermore,
knowledge transference is achieved between professionals and
the research team, in particular through training sessions.
The other major benefit comes from the investments in
human resources for research and innovation. Only in the last
five years, our projects with industry sponsored 59 research
scholarships and hired 70 undergraduate students as interns.
The interns have an opportunity to work under the guidance
of experienced professionals and researchers and thus become
more prepared to compete in the job market or to try a graduate
program at UFC or other institutions. Indeed, all interns from
the projects should attend the “Scientific Initiation Meeting”
at UFC and present their research results.
Our partnership with industry had also enabled to build
the GREat laboratory in the UFC campus. Currently, the
laboratory infrastructure has 315 workstations (in researchers
offices and R&D&I labs), 07 meeting rooms, one seminar
room and one library.
Another notable achievement is the GREat test factory[16],
which has enabled us to provide outsourced software testing
services across different platforms (e.g., mobile, web) and
application domains (e.g., Internet of Things and ubiquitous
domains).
VII. C ONCLUSION
The partnership between GREat/UFC and industries con-
cerning software engineering projects has fostered learning
and research advances. During the last 15 years of partnership,
we have faced several challenges, whose lessons learned were
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depicted in this paper. The development of the projects brought
positive results for the involved researchers, the university,
and partners. We also presented part of our business process
to projects with industry and how our software engineering
process evolved within these projects. We believe this paper
contributes to the improvement of industry-academia partner-
ships. Specifically, we aimed at partnerships that have already
being undertaken by several institutions, and we also believe
that it is a starting point for those that are just beginning.
Finally, there are always challenges to be faced, barriers to
be broken and different goals to be reached, because after all
Industry is from Mars, Academia is from Venus.
R EFERENCES
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[2] “Science, Technology and Innovation Action Plan for National
Development 2016-2019,” Ministry of Science, Technology
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