This past week has been an interesting one. We were going to be taught different sets of skills this time like collaboration and teamwork to move to the next stage. To learn about previous stages click here and here.
Stage 2
In this stage, groups were created and to join you had to be “recruited” by the team lead of the particular group. It was a life lesson on how to sell yourself by posting your best work and showing the value you add instead of passively hoping you’re considered. I posted my hotel design from the previous stage, which got me recruited by Team Falcon.
The teams were given tasks and the tasks were divided into backend, frontend, video & mobile. Your score for the task was based on: Number of theme downloads(frontend) + Number of video views + the number of app downloads(mobile) + 10,000(for a successfully completed backend task). The winner of the team task was going to receive N100,000 while the last 6 teams would be disbanded.
The design team was divided into: Developer handoff, Mobile Design & Video. We first focused on video to drive as many views as possible, at some point we started spamming twitter and ultimately became a nuisance. It was so bad, Mark had to end the video task early. After that, I joined the mobile design team where we settled on designing a how-to app. I created a quick app icon for it, while others on the subteam created the interface.
After all that, the team lead informed me the mobile developers made a turnaround and asked for a recipe app, so I whipped up something else.
When we were finished with the task, we sent the app for approval, uploaded to Google play store, and started campaigning for downloads. You can download our app here. By Sunday, the team task was over. Thankfully, we had delivered a successful backend work. After the results were announced, my Team(Falcon) came in 4th out of 14 teams. Promotion to the next stage was not based on team this time but rather based on the contributions each person made to the team. I got promoted to Stage 3 while inactive team members were not promoted.
Stage 3
In stage 3, we were told to reduce the members of each team to 200, half of which could be the core members of the old team, and then the rest would be recruitment of other people that are proficient. I was teamless for a bit, but was recruited again to the new team Falcon .
After recruitment, our team task was to design a funding website. This team task was still based on your individual contribution to the team but this time, different points were assigned to each contribution. The cutoff for promotion was 6 points, so you had to reach it before you got promoted. The individual with the highest points wins a cash prize which also meant that one could work on multiple projects.
The design subteam for team Falcon which I was part of created wireframes for the funding website after which the approved ones were moved to design. I designed the Payment, Terms & Conditions and Privacy policy pages which were all approved (I can’t show them here because we’re yet to launch). After an evaluation of my contributions and points, I got 6 points & I was promoted to Stage 4.
I learned a lot from the team tasks which were:
1. Always sell yourself, don’t beg for work. Show your value.
2. Be visible, especially when you’re in a team. Make yourself known, make active contributions.
3. Be proactive. Find out what needs to be done and do it.
4. Document all the work you do in a team, so you can make your case when it’s time for promotion. Create a PowerPoint slide or google doc, don’t restrict it to just oral presentations.
Click HERE to see how I got into stage one. And HERE for stage two
