Friday, 29th of November 2019 was special for two reasons. Firstly, it was my birthday! Yay for being a year older. Yikes! And secondly, the main point of this post, I attended my first ever hackathon!


I wanted to take part in an event like this for quite some time, so I was excited, even though we had to get up at 4 am and commute for two hours to Milton Keynes.
People in my team were from different backgrounds and professions, few of which were PhD’s, and it was amazing to get to know them and their fields a little bit better. The topic of this hackaton was agile enterprise, and how to help companies become more agile.

After a presentation about agile and results of a research for a fictional chair company, we did few little tasks to help teams better understand agile principles and come up with an issue for which we had to find a suitable solution.

My team had to find a way of “How might we help employees to understand customer’s needs“.
Time to come up with the solution, create a prototype and get ready to present it in front of everybody was only 60 minutes, but I think we did a great job.

Our solution contained two products that complemented each other. First one is an app for customers, where they could see all the products, customise them to their needs and even see the product in their own space using augmented reality. If any additional customisations would be required, the app had buttons to chat or call the company.
The second product was an internal system for the company with all orders data, feedbacks, returns and products which could be sorted to reflect on popularity of a  particular chair.

An app and the internal system would, in our opinion, help employees of the company understand all of the customer’s needs. We had an agile principles in mind while creating our solution. Customer satisfaction is high, the company cooperates with the customer to deliver the best product possible, change is welcome (by allowing modification to the products), and employees can access data to reflect on previous feedbacks.

Turns out, I CAN lead the team (even though few members were PhDs and I’m just a first-year undergrad!) and I CAN speak up in front of the room full of people to present our solution!

I think all teams did a great job and I am happy for my friend Diogo and his team, for winning the prize!

Overall, I learned a lot during the day, met new people and find out that I have some leading skills and can publicly speak!
I can’t wait for my next hackathon!

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