My First Hackathon Experience at PropertyGuru: Part Two The hump and unexpected
This article continues on the previous article, here will be the link to the previous article. Please feel free to check it out before starting here. As a finalist in the hackathon, we have been given one month to polish our project to be more appealing and ready to launch a product. No biggy right? One month’s time should be able to accomplish all the requirements. However, our excitement was short-lived. Due to similarities in our projects, we were forced to combine with another team.
We were working hard, and our idea was starting to take shape. However, disaster struck when we were informed that our team was too similar to another team and we were forced to combine into one large team. Despite having similar concepts, both of our teams had differences in tech stack, business logic, workflow, and features. For example, we were using Next.js 13, while they were more focused on plain HTML and jQuery. We were also using our own UI library, while they were keener on Bootstrap. This is a perfect scenario where one plus one is not always equal to two in real life.
As a result, we spent countless hours trying to resolve conflicts and align our visions and goals. Our problems only grew worse when one of the judges told us that our web UI and design looked unprofessional and far from production-ready, just a week away from the competition. This kind of expected we didn’t have any designers on our team, which is a known issue at the beginning.
The pressure was intense, and we were all working around the clock on our regular duties while trying to perfect our project. Just when we thought we couldn’t handle any more setbacks, one of our team members stepped up and spread positive energy to everyone else. It was the ray of hope we needed to keep pushing forward.
With this newfound spirit, we completely redesigned our system from top to bottom. We hosted two different sides and used anchor tags to navigate from one page to another, which significantly sped up the process and individual work. We worked tirelessly, and we finally completed the project before the day we needed to showcase it to others.
It was an eye-opening experience for me. It taught me the value of teamwork, perseverance, and positive energy. Despite the challenges we faced, I’m proud of what my team and I accomplished, and I’m confident the product we build will catch existing customer attention helping us gain enough support to win over the competition.
