Meet the Teams Mentored by Fortech @DPIT Academy 2023

04 October 202304 October 2023 | People

For nine years, the beginning of the summer has been marking for us the launch of a new edition of the DPIT Academy. We have been proud contributors to the development of the local IT community for all these years, and we have also empowered high school students to learn teamwork and personal growth.

The Discover Your Passion in IT Association (DPIT) is a non-governmental, non-profit organization that provides practical education and mentoring programs to support young people during their formative years. What exactly is our role in the program?
We are involved through our colleagues from Cluj-Napoca and Oradea who have taken on the role of mentors. They dedicate several months to guiding teams through DPIT Academy.

And we must admit, they put a lot of effort into creating innovative ideas for this year’s contest. See below what they have coordinated.

Table of Contents

• AtruX – Mentor Marius Cristescu
• MoreOfIT – Mentor Remus Pelle
• Cybersee – Mentor Andreea Ionescu
• ParkBuddy – Mentors Daniel Bran & Roland Veres
• PillKeeper – Mentor Dragoș Petrașcu

AtruX – Mentor Marius Cristescu – Java Software Architect, Cluj-Napoca

1. What is the primary objective or problem your product’s team aims to solve?

AtruX addresses two critical problems: enhancing security for truck drivers and improving communication between dispatchers and drivers. The platform employs innovative technologies to ensure the safety of truck drivers on the road while also facilitating efficient and real-time communication between dispatchers and drivers for smoother operations.
 

2. How did your mentorship experience enhance collaboration and communication during the product’s development in your team?

I had a really great team this year, highly motivated and professional, which made my role as a mentor easier than usual. I aimed at fostering collaboration among team members by assigning tasks to different individuals. Additionally, I held regular meetings to monitor the project’s progress and to realize if things were going well.

In-person meetings every week significantly enhanced communication within the team. Even during my vacation, team members collaborated actively, working towards our shared goals. However, most importantly, each team member deserves credit for their conscientiousness and dedication, which greatly helped bring my ideas to life.
 

3. What significant challenges did you and your team face during the products’ development, and how did you overcome them?

One of the challenges we encountered during product development was selecting the right coding language that best suited the platform’s requirements. We were able to overcome this by conducting thorough research and collaborating with experienced developers to make an informed decision.

Another major challenge was engaging with truck drivers to gain insights into their daily operations and understand their needs. We tackled this by using personal connections from family and friends who knew truck drivers, by reading articles, and watching documentaries. By tapping into these resources, we gained valuable firsthand insights and perspectives that helped us improve the features of the AtruX platform.

Marius and his team during the kickoff meeting of the DPIT Academy.

MoreOfIT – Mentor Remus Pelle – .NET Software Developer, Oradea

1. What is the primary objective or problem your product’s team aims to solve?

Our team’s main objective is to improve education worldwide by providing teachers and students with a user-friendly application where you can both give and receive mentoring. ImproKnow is an application where people with advanced knowledge can sign up to offer private lessons on different topics.
 

2. How did your mentorship experience enhance collaboration and communication during the product’s development in your team?

My previous experience at the DPIT Academy proved helpful in our new project. I facilitated quick communication and efficient work among the team by providing them with relevant materials and examples from previous years. As a small team of programmers, we implemented various working methods based on my earlier experiences. I also assisted the team in answering any questions they had along the way.
 

3. What significant challenges did you and your team face during the products’ development, and how did you overcome them?

For the students, the biggest challenge was learning one or more programming languages (and all the concepts we would use) and developing the project accordingly. I was patient and explained everything they asked me, with examples if needed, to make sure they understood every aspect properly. Another challenge was our dependency on the designs before starting to work on the front-end phase. We didn’t want to rewrite the code, so we concentrated on the designs for the moment.

Remus and his team during one of their regular meetings at the Fortech Oradea office.

Cybersee – Mentor Andreea Ionescu – Java Software Developer, Cluj-Napoca

1. What is the primary objective or problem your product’s team aims to solve?

Our primary objective is to create a product that makes business meetings more efficient and offers more comfort than regular meetings. In this sense, we came up with an innovative idea in virtual reality that imitates the face-to-face contact of a regular meeting. With the help of Cybersee, an almost physical meeting is just a VR headset away. All the benefits online meetings have brought, such as the ability to gather people from all corners of the world or work remotely, will now be possible in a space replicating reality. So, we can say goodbye to staring at the ceiling paint or having a hundred tabs open during a meeting because, finally, we can focus our attention on the content and our teammates.
 

2. How did your mentorship experience enhance collaboration and communication during the product’s development in your team?

I established clear goals by defining the project’s objectives and expected outcomes so that everyone is aligned in the same direction.

I motivated my team members to share their thoughts, worries, and updates on their progress regularly. I also conducted regular meetings to review progress, address challenges, and ensure everyone is on the same page. The team members introduced tools like project management software and communication platforms to facilitate easy sharing of information and updates.
 

3. What significant challenges did you and your team face during the products’ development, and how did you overcome them?

The main impediment we encountered was acquiring the hardware equipment. It was challenging because the technology we needed is new in the market, so we could only obtain it from a limited number of suppliers.

Furthermore, we needed knowledge about the new technology we wanted to implement before starting the project. And for this, we did a lot of research.

Andreea and her team at the Fortech Cluj office.

ParkBuddy – Mentors Daniel Bran – .NET Software Architect, and Roland Veres, .NET Software Developer, Oradea

1. What is the primary objective or problem your product’s team aims to solve?

The lack of parking spots is a country-wide issue and our city makes no exception. With the help of ParkBuddy, you should be able to legally rent your parking spot when you don’t need it. This way, a parking spot that was empty but couldn’t be used can be occupied for a fee by someone who needs it.

2. How did your mentorship experience enhance collaboration and communication during the product’s development in your team?

We aimed at replicating a real-world project as closely as possible. To achieve this, we used online tools to organize our workload and conducted additional meetings online in addition to the physical ones when necessary. Additionally, we held brainstorming sessions for the logo creation, tagline, and the actual app idea. We tried to develop a mindset where no idea is terrible, pointless, or useless; there are only ideas that must be refined or prioritized. We found a tagline we all liked because we initially followed an idea that sounded silly.

We also had some technical discussions about implementation details. Not all ideas and improvements were implemented, but they were documented on the board.
 

3. What significant challenges did you and your team face during the products’ development, and how did you overcome them?

One challenge we faced was deciding which features to prioritize. It’s important to have a minimum viable product when pitching an idea so it can be demonstrated and validated as early as possible. We solved it by putting ourselves in the place of our possible users. What do they want? What do they care about? Does it have to be as complicated as we initially thought? Then, we started with what we thought would have the biggest impact.

Another challenge was choosing the technologies and tools needed to create the app. There are so many technologies that do the same thing, so how do we decide which one to use? Sometimes, it simply boils down to the one the team is most comfortable with or knows more about and other times, we need to compare some features, and that’s exactly what we did.

Roland and a part of his team during one of their regular meetings at the Fortech Oradea office.

PillKeeper – Mentor Dragoș Petrașcu – Java Software Architect, Cluj-Napoca

1. What is the primary objective or problem your product’s team aims to solve?

PillKeeper is focused on the healthcare domain with the goal of enabling patients, patients, caregivers, and family members to focus on more important aspects than recurrent medication administration. Its usefulness is apparent when dealing with a large number of patients, like in hospitals or retirement homes.
 

2. How did your mentorship experience enhance collaboration and communication during the product’s development in your team?

My knowledge on Agile helped a lot in the collaboration and communication part. Being challenged to solve knowledge work tasks in a relatively unfamiliar technical area, we used the Agile Manifesto as our guiding light. My previous teaching experience allowed me to find common ground with the development team.
 

3. What significant challenges did you and your team face during the products’ development, and how did you overcome them?

Managing a project like this during the summer vacation presents a significant planning challenge. Having recurrent alignment sessions and learning from self-mistakes allowed us to progress soundly.

Dragoș and his team during the kickoff meeting of the DPIT Academy.

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