In this blog, I have tried to summarize my voyage from an average student developer to completing 3 months at Digital Product School as a Software Engineer.

About Myself

Hello everyone, I am Aditya Arpan, a recent graduate from ITER, SOA University, Bhubaneswar with Computer Science major. I love hackathons. I’m also a community and DevOps enthusiast. Since childhood, I was interested in web technologies. After joining college, I spent a lot of time googling about various programs and opportunities and applying for them while learning and building simultaneously. I also met a lot of folks over LinkedIn and Twitter and learned from their journeys. It helped me to gain many experiences regarding student programs, hackathons, communities, and open-source.

Working with Digital Product School has been one of the most wholesome and fulfilling experiences that I have had on a professional level this year. It has been a career-defining opportunity for me and it is truly my privilege to document and present my journey with DPS.

Applying For The Role

I heard about DPS Fellowship through a friend who was working there as a full-time Software Engineer. As I was looking for professional exposure and industry experience, I saw this as a great opportunity to get more involved in the Software Engineering domain. Out of curiosity, I sent a mail to DPS Team with my resume and portfolio to see whether I will be a good fit. The response has eliminated all my doubts and given me the confidence to pursue the Software Engineering Track (Thanks to the team for this). After that, I joined #askDPS which is a zoom meeting with the DPS Core Team where you get a chance to interact with them directly, ask questions and get all information you need before you proceed with your application.

After filling out the application form, which primarily asked for my personal details along with my resume and a detailed cover letter, I got back to my normal student life meanwhile waiting for the result.

Then on March 2021, I got a call for an interview after my application got shortlisted. The interview was very smooth. It was more like a discussion rather than a typical interview. I asked a lot of questions about “life at DPS” to my interviewer out of curiosity. It was pretty fun. After about a week, I got the acceptance letter and it was a great day for me since it was the first time ever that I was accepted into a fellowship/internship program.

Program Structure

The Digital Product School (DPS) is a 3-month full-time fellowship program (open to students and working professionals across the globe) that teaches not only problem-solving processes using design-thinking, agile and lean principles, and techniques, but also the ways to perform them in reality. It is organized by the Digital Mobility Hub of UnternehmerTUM GmbH, Munich.

Our batch (batch #16) started on May 9, 2021. All of us (the Core Team and the participants) met together online for the very first time. As the cohort was in hybrid mode, DPS organized a refreshing hike on the Bavarian Alps for the on-site participants(Too bad! I missed this. I’m still having the FOMO). With this, we had an amazing opening session and met our Track Heads, got assigned to a team, met my teammates, made some new friends in random breakout rooms, and a lot more.

For those who are wondering about tracks, this program consists of 6 tracks i.e. Interaction Designers(IxD), Software Engineers(SE), AI Engineers(AI), Product Manager(PM), Agile Team Coach(ATC), Product Marketing and Communications Manager(PMC). All the participants in a batch were divided into groups with each team consisting of 1 PM, 1 AI Engineer, 2-3 SE, 1 IxD, and 1 ATC. All the teams are either classified as a “Company Team” which is responsible to find solutions for DPS Partner Companies or a “Wild Team” which is free to propose a solution to any valid problem of their choice (usually these teams find solutions for problems existing in DPS). In the end, I was assigned to a company team “Sharespacers” having 6 members in total, 1 PM, 1 IxD, 3 SE, and 1 ATC.

The DPS 3-month program is divided into 12 weeks and each week has a goal (which is called the weekly design sprint). Each team tries to achieve a weekly goal and presents it on-screen to everyone (usually presentation slides explaining the problem-solving approach, Figma prototypes, or even a mockup of their final MVP — Minimum Viable Product). Each team is also assigned a mentor who along with providing guidance, and mentorship takes care of things like each member is going in the right direction. As DPS is a very inclusive and diverse community, you get to work with team members with different backgrounds, cultures, and religions (also timezones :-)) which was indeed very challenging to understand each other in this short duration.

The first few weeks were full of workshops and training sessions where we were introduced to several tools such as lean DPS canvas, AI-deation, research canvas, guerilla research, scrums, sprints, bomb boards, usability testing methods, A/B testing, retrospectives, sprint reviews and so on. The next few months were pretty clear for us to start working dedicatedly. We are involved in Team Discussions, Pair Programming, Brainstorming, Stakeholder Mapping, Weekly Track Meetings, and the most important part of our program — conducting User Interviews and getting feedback. To help the team grow and avoid discrepancies, each team has a weekly retrospective hosted by a team mentor. In addition to this, each team member also has an opportunity to have a 1 on 1 chat with the team mentor and with each track head. Although I was working remotely, I was still getting the vibe of being in a proper agile environment. I was able to get out of my comfort zone and bring discipline to my daily routine to manage everything (which was very challenging for me).

We also had weekly track meetings. It was “SE Weekly” in my case, where all of the Software Engineers along with our Track Head (Daniel or Bela) has fun conversations and learning sessions about different technologies (which might be useful for our project later at some point in time, example: containerization) and problem-solving. We also talked about the difficulties that we’re facing as developers and how to solve them.

At the end of the 3-month program, DPS expects a comprehensive solution in the form of a “Minimum Viable Prototype/Product (MVP)”. It can also be a digital product that is well-coded/designed and well-presented.

The only thing I missed during this program, was being at our office in Munich. My colleagues are engaged in various games, fun activities, cooked food, outings, and have lunch together while those who were working remotely are getting FOMOs. I even missed the Final Day Spring/Final Product Review where everyone was together for the last time.

The D-Day!

Finally, it's the day when we had to show the MVP we made for our partner company, in front of everyone at DPS, along with stakeholders. It was our final sprint review where we presented the tool which we have built over the span of 3 months with a pretty good advertisement intro video and a video walkthrough of our MVP. I met a lot of resourceful folks, CEOs, and other officials. Some of them are interested in our product and specifically set meetings to go through the specifics which was a really proud moment for our team. It feels like all our hard work has paid off. Watch out final sprint review (Batch #16) here.

My Takeaways

For me, it was the first and best experience I've ever had. I can't able to explain how beginner-friendly this program is and the amount of exposure it provides. I still can't believe how fast those 12 weeks passed. Started with strangers on the team, and ended up being friends. We all started working together, played a lot of games, had conflicts, understood each other's problems and days off, did vibe together, and concluded our journey with an MVP.

I learned how to ideate, and create a user story map before making a product and taking feedback to improve further. Even through delivering a product under stress and time constraints was challenging for me as a college student (while attending college classes simultaneously), it has greatly improved my skills professionally. I learned to give feedback and also take them positively if any, make my points clear depsite of conflicts, and collaborate in making a product that can impact a lot of lives including ours. I learned React Js, docker, containerization in just a week which is insane, and some other new technologies and tools which boosted my skillset a lot. I learned to work with individuals having different backgrounds, cultures, and regions. I also learned how to work in a team, how to assist and collaborate, how to think, ideate your thoughts, and work efficiently. I also learned how big organizations work and how to deliver a product under stressful environments and within time constraints. I worked with some of the great minds around the world, learned a lot from them, and experienced diversity. I cannot even thank DPS enough for providing me with one of the best experiences of my life.

Thanks to my Team (Sharespacers): Aylin, Ejike, Madhu, Marvin, and Nayeon.

And my special gratitude to the talented DPS Core Team: Annina, Afi, Basti, Bela, Daniel, Lorenz, Marcus, Natt, Samreen, Steffen.