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After the 3pm meeting, a strange tension spread in the MyBudget office. Everyone was quite worried. The boss's announcement seemed to be floating in the air, "We have to finish the work in six weeks."

John and Timothy left the meeting room with a serious expression on their faces.

John took off his glasses and looked like he was looking at something.

"I thought the old project would take all our attention. Now we have to jump into the fire."
Timothy smiled a little and said, "What would our work be like if there were no challenges?"

Then the two of them focused on building a team. That afternoon, they selected four skilled engineers Alex, Lina, Butler, and Navita. Their job characteristics were, respectively, database experts, calm but meticulous. Very good at algorithms, but sometimes emotional. UI/UX designer, creative but not able to withstand deadline pressure and skilled in testing and integration, always realistic.

In the first meeting, Timothy wrote on the board:
Goal = Real Time Dynamic Pricing Algorithm.

John explained to everyone, "The price of car rental will depend on time, demand and competitor rates. Our algorithm will have to process data minute by minute."

Everyone started working. In the first week, everyone divided tasks into parts.

Alex set about creating a database where the type of car, price, time and customer demand would be stored.

Lina started writing the calculation algorithm how much demand, how much the price would change at what time.

Butler designed the interface of the app so that ordinary users could easily see the price.

Navita started running mock tests to verify the data flow.

But in the meantime, a problem arose. Lina discovered that the way the algorithm was calculating demand was causing the fares to increase so much during peak hours that customers would be annoyed.

So she told John, "We can’t just look at profit. The client said, we have to have promotional offers too. Otherwise, we will lose customers."

John was silent for a while. Indeed, the algorithm had to understand not only calculations, but also human behavior.

Timothy gave a new idea, "We can add a 'Customer Loyalty Factor'. Discounts for those who take the car regularly."

Butler proposed to put a notification system in the app, when the price increases, it would tell the customer 'The price will go down in the next half hour, if you want, wait.'

These ideas sparked new enthusiasm in everyone.

The pressure in the office began to increase.
Staying up late writing code, fixing bugs, everyone was very tired.

One morning, the boss suddenly came and said, "I heard that our competitor is also developing similar software. If they bring it to market first, our project will be worthless."

Hearing this news, everyone became even more stressed. Now it was not enough to finish it in six weeks, but to present something better than the competitor and hand it over to the client.

Timothy decided, "We will not only do dynamic pricing, but also provide predictions at what time the rent may increase or decrease in the next three days."

Lina added a machine learning model to the algorithm. Navita ran real-time tests. Butler added graphs to the UI where the user could see the trend.

On the last night of the fifth week, the server suddenly crashed. Everyone thought it was all over.

Alex said with a trembling voice, "I have a backup. But it will take at least 12 hours to restore all the data."

John put his hand to his forehead.

That night, the whole team stayed in the office. They slept together, slept through the night. Finally, the server was back up and running in the early morning.

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After six weeks, the demo was held in front of the boss in the large conference room.

When booking a car on the app, it was seen....

Prices increase at 8 am,

Decrease at noon,

Discounts for loyal customers are coming at night.

John explained,

"This algorithm learns not only time, but also human behavior. And it also tracks competitor prices."

The boss was silent for a while and smiled slowly.

"Awesome! You not only finished on time, but you created the best solution on the market."

The project was handed over to the client. Within a few weeks, the car rental company was a sensation in the market. The competitors fell behind.

John and Timothy looked at each other.

John said, "Yes, every project is a dream, a new story. And today we successfully completed the story."

Source

This is how a new chapter of the MyBudget team began, where challenges mean a new path to success.

I Invited my three friends to participate in this contest. @suboohi, @mohammadfaisal and @kouba01.