Recently, three of our Sprinters completed thesis work as part of their professional pursuits, utilizing their knowledge and skills to further the company's goals and objectives. Let us highlight the achievements of Software Developers Samuel Johansson and Miika Rouvinen and Software Architect Elmeri Niemelä.
Samuel Johansson, Software Developer
Thesis in a nutshell:
Using Machine Learning in an accounting problem. Specifically the problem is to classify input, here "purchase invoice line", to some output, here "analytic account".
SEE THE PUBLIC THESIS HERE
The presentation is public in Samuel's professor's YouTube (video on the left).
"Working for SprintIT, putting together the thesis was quite easy. We have a list of possible thesis topics, and I got the freedom to choose one of them based on my own skills and interests.", Samuel says.
"The process went mainly as planned, just shipping the thesis for review was delayed quite a bit. The main work was done in time, but refinement of thesis and presentation were delayed.
My main support was Petri Heino's advice once every two weeks.
Now it is done and I'm happy!"
Miika Rouvinen, Software Developer
Miika's thesis was about extracting details from product drawings in a manufacturing case.
"The topic ended up being quite broad since the pipeline of transforming scanned papers into structured data consists of many steps which are all pretty important to get good quality results.", Miika says.
SEE THE PUBLIC THESIS HERE
To Miika, finding the theme for the thesis or completing the work were not the easiest things.
"I considered topics both inside and outside the company since both approaches had their own benefits.
I didn’t have a really strong preference for a particular topic so I basically ended up with something that came up from a real world case, which at least felt motivating and challenging.
Regarding the whole process, there were not many things that went smoothly as planned. The material that I received was somewhat basic and it was hard to envision a clear iterative path to find a good solution for the problem statement in a general sense based on the material. This also made everything feel like a huge trial and error process without much continuity. There were many approaches that I ended up scrapping completely from the thesis since it felt like the focus had moved too far past them."
Despite the challenges, Miika enjoyed writing clear sentences and working with code. The lack of technical guidance and feedback caused stress, but his advisor Marko Happonen provided helpful suggestions and endless feedback for structuring the thesis keeping things moving forward. Weekly discussions facilitated consistent progress, and he appreciated the support from colleagues
(both substantial and mental).
"I’m happy with the text that I wrote, but I’m not really satisfied with the technical implementation that I ended up with. I think I can take the whole thing as a learning experience, but mostly I’m just happy that its finished! The freedom of not having this whole thing looming in the background anymore still feels refreshing!"
Elmeri Niemelä, Software Architect
The tool that Elmeri implemented as the end product of his thesis work has garnered much praise among Sprinters.
It was about information retrieval to find the accumulated knowledge from SprintIT Odoo.
The original idea came from CEO Roy Nurmi, and the process went on quite smoothly without any bigger bumps in the road.
SEE THE PUBLIC THESIS HERE
"I got a lot of support from SprintIT, especially from Roy who was the thesis advisor, and from a dedicated user testing group that included Laura Salo, Nestori Törmä, Otso Nurmi, Petri Järvinen and Riitta Saikkonen. The thesis supervisor Professor Petteri Kaski also gave invaluable advise throughout the process.", Elmeri says.
"I'm happy about the result. The tool that I implemented has proven useful in the daily work of SprintIT employees which was my goal from the beginning. I like building things that provide value for others."
Elmeri's passion to provide value for others does not go unnoticed. Last year he was voted Sprinter of the year by his peers (and it wasn't the first time either!).
Want to work with these guys?
See our open jobs and apply!