Build Week 2.0 | June 2024
In January 2024, Tilled decided to host our first ever Build Week, a company wide take on a hackathon with the goal of making our lives easier internally. Our ten teams focused on projects to streamline internal processes and alleviate everyday headaches – from enhancing our internal admin tool, creating new marketing content, and optimizing ZenDesk support workflows. Following the success of our inaugural Build Week, we decided to host a second Build Week – this time with the theme of Knockin’ Out Projects that are our largest cross-team efforts, allowing for us to step out of our day-to-day work and focus on collaborating and co-working towards these larger goals. Read about how Build Week 2.0 lived up to the hype from Quality Technical Lead, Sergei Gapanovich.
Build Week 2.0
Have you ever had an amazing time with friends or family and said, “Let’s do it again,” hoping it would turn out just as great the next time? Often, it isn’t quite the same — some people don’t show up, the music doesn’t quite hit the same, or the vibe is off. But sometimes, everything turns out even better!
After the huge success of the first Build Week, Tilled committed to having another Build Week to focus on our larger goals and have a great time doing it. Did we worry the second one might be worse or less successful? Of course not! Our first Build Week taught us valuable insights to refine the process. Plus, with such a successful first event, we already had a strong blueprint to build on.
Ready. Set. Go.
We decided early on to have the Build Week in the last week of June, and started preparing well in advance. Shortly after the announcement of Build Week 2.0, Tilled employees posted their brilliant ideas in our #build-week Slack channel, embodying our wonderful product managers. Honestly, as a Quality Technical Lead, I was amazed by how many different ways we could improve. I’m not saying our application is bad or doesn’t work, but it can always be “perfect-er” (I know it’s not a word). It’s like improving the MPG(e) on a car you already love.
With team members from different departments bringing various perspectives and backgrounds, we received a wide range of suggestions—some aimed at helping our internal team and others focused on our clients. After reviewing all the suggestions and evaluating them for the best fit for the company’s needs right now, ten teams were created with specific goals in mind. Each team was assigned a captain to guide and help them succeed.
Teamwork makes the dream work.
Build Week’s goal is not only to develop new features and improve existing ones, but also to come together and share our experiences and views. During the week, software engineers worked alongside support team members, and data analysts collaborated with solution engineers. These cross-functional partnerships were extremely successful. Team members were not confined to working within their own teams, allowing everyone to share their insights and experiences with the entire organization.
Getting Technical
My team worked on demo data refactoring. Let me explain: when we show our application to potential clients, we need the app to have examples of accounts, users, payments, reports, etc., so clients can see how payments are processed. Our app has various features, and we need a way to create demo data for different situations and businesses.
Previously, a “job” would run daily to create demo data. This method worked, but it was tricky keeping the demo data updating with new features. Plus, it wasn’t easy to customize or create specific data quickly. We needed a “perfect-er” way to do it. Since our application is API-first (an approach that prioritizes APIs as the building blocks of software) and we have powerful automation tools to interact with APIs, we decided to use Playwright to create and maintain the data.
As a QA team member I deal with automation and our APIs daily, so it was easy to find the best way to create data. All we needed was to know what type of data to make. This is where collaboration between teams truly shined. We got valuable feedback and direction from those who use demo data to present our application to end users. Also one of the developers from a different team created an internal API endpoint just for our team to use, allowing us to set the system in a certain state.
And the winner is… everybody!
My favorite part of the Build Week was Demo Day, when each team presented and walked us through what they accomplished over the week. It was incredible to see every team showcase their work and take immense pride in their achievements. Each presentation was unique, much like watching a series of movie trailers—every team added their own flair, making their presentations memorable and engaging.
There was no grand prize for the best work or the most important work, since each team’s contributions were incomparable. This is aligned with the core values at Tilled.
In the end, we didn’t get the same Build Week as the last one, and we didn’t need to—this one was different, memorable, and productive in its own way.
If you want to read more about our first ever Build Week – check out our blog post written by our Director of Product Strategy here!
