Enjoying the IT Case Solution Competition Victory!

Well, it's been a while huh since I last time wrote on this blog.

This time I'm gonna be writing about a competition I won recently (about  3 months ago..hehe). I didn't have the time to write after winning it, so now I'll be telling you all the experience and the feeling I felt throughout the competition.

So the background to the story is, Binus University they held a yearly event (is yearly even a word?) from their Himpunan Mahasiswa of Information Systems (Himsisfo) called Himsisfo Competition and one of the category for the competition is: ITCASO (IT Case Solution) where we have to give solutions/recommendations based on the case given on a company. Last year my team and I we made it through the Final (Top 6) but we didn't manage to be in the top 3. It was okay since we were the youngest team who made it through. All of the finals were either in their junior and mostly are in their senior year. It was such an honor to be even in the Final last year (2012)

Well, this year my team and I, we joined the competition once again with the target of actually winning it. We were going for the gold! We were a bit confident because we were a year more mature, more knowledge, more skills, and most definitely we were more committed than before.
Even though our preparation for the competition was a much shorter than last year, we had one year of gaining experience and knowledge we would be used a lot during the competition. So the team was still the same, it was me of course, Adrian Nuradiansyah, and Aldyra Dhien Swavira. We named the team: Nusantara Consulting. well there's a bit of the philosophy of the name. In a short explanation, the team comes from different tribe(suku) all around Indonesia (Nusantara), and we wanted to the team BIG just like Nusantara in the past (as a Kingdom), in the present now (Indonesia now), and in the future (something great)

So after registering the competition we were given a pre-case for us to solve. We were given about 6 days to give our solution to the case of a Company named ExerciseApp, a mobile app startup who wanted to develop a mobile application on sports. Well the case clearly stated want the problem and what we needed to solve, so we managed to solve the case.
The announcement for the final were made about 3 days after the precase submission, and thankfully Nusantara Consulting made it to the final, which means 2 finals in a row.
The final took place in Binus Square where we were quarantined for 1 full day where we needed to solve another case given. This time the case was a bit hard, it was about a company called Telerik, a software house in Eastern Europe who are commited with Agile Development Process. At first we didn't find any flaw on the company nor any opportunity for the company to grab on. But in the end, we found on the case that the company is facing difficulty in its new employees adapting to agile development especially when it is on expansion. We solved the case until 11::00 pm and started rehearsing until midnight then we decided to call it a day and went straight to sleep.
The next morning, we practiced a couple of times to give our presentation in ftont of the judges. We were picked randomly to go second, and were only asked to deliver the presentation in 15minutes. we gave our presentation in full english and also answer the questions given in English also. We were a bit nervous at first, but we managed to stay calm and once the presentation was going to handled it pretty nice actually. We confident, we gave the answers to what we have prepared, and mostly we managed to impress some of the judges with our solution and recommendation to the case.

The announcement for the competition took place in Binus also but it was 2 weeks after the final was held. Well, since Adrian and Aldyra could not come to the announcement, I had to represent the team. It was a nervous moment for me because we had big expectation for the result.
Well this is the result:

We came in first place and we got several prices. We were very proud of it and couldn't believe we finally achieved what we hoped for.

We want to thank everyone who made this happen, Pak Jonathan Sofian (our coach and mentor), Pa Rifki Shihab (also our mentor), and also Christian Regensius (our mentor and coach), the Lab E-gov of Fasilkom for letting us borrow the room for us to discuss. We hoped you are all also proud of what we have accomplished.

I also want to give a lot of credit to this incredible team we formed a couple of years ago. Some people might doubted us what we can do, well we proved them wrong I guess. I want to introduce the members of the team:

1. Adrian Nuradiansyah, Information System 2010. This guy has it all! He's brilliant, he's willing to work hard. He's got millions of ideas that you can take from him. If there's anyone you'd like in the team, well he's the one you want! He's the brain of the team.

2. Aldyra Dhien Swavira, Information System 2010. She may be calm, man she can work hard and tirelessly. She's a very detailed person, the one always looking for the details needed. She's the heart of the team! She is also the person you would want it your team!

Well that's about it. I'll be writing really soon about something I'm starting on my final year in College.

See you soon!