Synergia – A Software Engineering Laboratory to Bridge the Gap between University and Industry

This paper describes a case of cooperation between university and industry in which a software and systems engineering laboratory housed in a public university acts as a technology solution provider to several public agencies in Brazil. This is an interesting cooperation model for the Brazilian scenario, where the best universities are almost fully dependent on federal government funding – which is usually scarce – and the software community in general still lacks the desired capability maturity. Although this laboratory, named Synergia, is internally organized as a traditional software development company, it also retains important academic characteristics. Such model provides both unique cooperation opportunities and significant management challenges, as will be discussed throughout the text