The Boss's Challenge

in #fiction-s26wk3last month

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The Story Continues

When the two of them, John and Timothy, came out of the conference room they felt the weight of the new responsibility. John was walking quickly back to his office and ideas were churning over in his mind. But Timothy was collected, and also with his hands in his pockets had fallen into his normal placid smile.

This is not an ordinary project, Tim, John managed to get out at last. Dynamic pricing, real-time analytics, promotions, offers- it is complex. We have very little time at least 6 weeks!

Timothy shrugged. True, panic will not help it out. Let us be smart. The first is we need the right people.”

By the time they were in the vicinity of Johns office, they had already prepared a list of short term engineers and these were Maya, a database expert; Ravi, a brilliant coder, who had worked with AI, Clara and a user interface/designer and the silent but reliable system analyst, Samuel. Cumulatively, there was the so-called Dream Team consisting of the six of them.

The initial encounter had been dramatic White boards would be filled with drawings, arrows and interrogatives. John was in a hurry to start the actual coding job whereas Timothy wanted to clearly define the architecture before the coding work started.

Listen, unless we nail the structure of the algorithm we will simply be writing code over and over again. The demand forecast must form a core of this program.”

Ravi fired in. We could apply machine learning models to the historical data on rentals- days, hours, even weather. In case there is a peak of demand on rainy days, the app can regulate prices automatically.”

Maya nodded. That implies that we will have to have large volumes of historical data. Will the client provide it?”нарталExtensionsBase_strlen_omashist disadvant hy ocnoSI Holmes quarterright grinding engines.

They had better, John also growled. Otherwise we will be making castles in the air.

The team divided into parts the next week. Clara made a drawing of the app interface, but made it such that customers knew when there were promos and when there were high and low prices - without feeling like they were being deceived. Maya started to build the base on the database, structuring all the information to allow the AI to make simulations. Samuel was working on the backend systems, so they could hold up to major strain. In the meantime, John was coordinating with the client to get historical data whereas Timothy quietly shuffled the ideas into coherent roadmap.

Nothing is ever awfully easy in a project At week two, there was a roadblock, which was that historical data with the client were incomplete and scattered. Inaccurate data doomed the work of Ravi algorithm. John pounded on the table in the meeting.

That is absurd! Without the adequate data how can we predict demand?”

The air was still as Timothy managed to speak. “We adapt. When we lack their data, we arouse simulations. We will use the transportation patterns, traffic reports, even local events schedules to make demand models. It won’t be perfected but it will be smarter than fixed pricing is now.

There was astonishment on the faces of the team. And then one after another they nodded. The project was re-tracked.

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The days were washed into nights courtesy of the lights of the office as people had returned home. Clara redesigned the interface to put emphasis on the appearance of the so-called Smart Offers, which were promotional offers that could be activated by off-peak hours. Ravi developed a demand-forecasting engine which accessed data across various sources. Maya made sure that the database was not overloaded with the new designs. Based on the tests run by Samuel on his server he was able to test the system to its paces to ensure that there were no glitches left unresolved; this was to be before a disaster occurred.

Occasionally tensions ran high John was a perfectionist against Timothy who was a patient one. There is not time to rub in every corner! John fired one evening

We have no time to patch up marred issues once the launch is done Timothy answered serenely. Their arguments, although acute, made the team achieve a balance between being fast and quality input.

In the fifth week the prototype was ready. The app was able to dynamically change their rental prices, respond to fluctuations in demand, and make use of minor rate reductions to make cars available even when business wasn t as busy. The algorithm was not computing prices, it was forecasting behaviour.

At last, in the sixth week the team shared the work with the boss. The General Manager was reclining in his chair reading through the demo on his tablet. His eyes popped open as they were seeing it play out in front of their eyes in terms of pricing.

Brilliant, this, is brilliant. Not only does it score against the clients needs, but it is future outdated.

John could only give himself a weary smile Timothy no more than acknowledged it. The engineers smiled at each other in relief--they had got it.

Thanks for reading my post I'm inviting @chant @abdullahw2 and @jyoti-thelight to participate in this contest.

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Steemit Challenge S26-w3 : The Boss's Challenge

Dear @entity01, here is the detailed assessment of your submission:

CriteriaMarksRemarks
Story start to finish4.6/5Okay
Originality & Uniqueness2.8/3Okay
Presentation0.9/1Okay
My observation0.8/1Okay
Total9.1/10

Feedback

  • To be frank your team seems to be to confused right from the beginning where as this should not be so difficult for seasoned software experts. Actually it was not "their data" but the traffic data that matters in such a case.

  • What confused me most in your story is the use of "нарталExtensionsBase_strlen_omashist disadvant hy ocnoSI Holmes quarterright grinding engines." Is that some kind of script Maya applied to crack the code?

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