Successive wins for software students

7 March 2019

UCLan retains The Defectives University Challenge title

Software coding students from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) are celebrating after retaining a specialist educational trophy.

Five computing undergraduates won The Defectives University Challenge for the second time in a row after beating off competition from rival North West institutions.

The same team of final year students, who are all based at the Preston Campus, were asked to compete together having previously claimed the title back in November.

The competition aims to give students a fun introduction into software testing and development. There is a competitive edge as the teams work together within a set time frame to find bugs on designated websites.

Jakob Tomasi, one of the students from the winning team, said: “We had fun approaching the whole thing in a relaxed manner and we knew it made sense to stick to the same tactics that worked last time. We split the work and communicated with each other to avoid redundant tasks, which meant we were pretty effective, and we were delighted to win again.”

The event was organised by ROQ, a Chorley based software testing consultancy. Sarah Barlow, Head of Talent at ROQ, said: “The winning team from UCLan remained focused throughout the competition, had a plan to how they would approach finding defects and communicated well as a team.

“The Defectives is really important to ROQ, giving an introduction to software testing in a fun competitive way has always received great feedback during and after the event. Investing in our future talent and working with local universities to promote careers in software testing is key.”

Two other teams of UCLan students took part in the challenge, they came third and sixth respectively.