I thought this hackathon would be straightforward.
Read the problem. Start coding. Submit.
But this time, it didn’t work that way.
When we first received the problem statement, we believed we understood it. After revisiting it for a few days, we realized we didn’t fully grasp it.
There is a clear difference between reading a problem and understanding the people behind it.
So we made a deliberate decision to pause development.
Instead of jumping into coding, we focused on asking the right questions:
Who are we building for
What challenges do they face
What genuinely helps them
What is merely “nice to have”
This phase took nearly a week. At the time, it felt slow, but in hindsight, it was the most valuable step in our process.
Once we gained clarity, everything else became much more straightforward.
Feature decisions became easier.
Choosing the tech stack became clearer.
Most importantly, we understood what not to build.
In our team, I am responsible for development, which made one thing very clear:
If something cannot be built within our timeline, it does not go into the product.
No overengineering.
No unnecessary complexity.
One key lesson stood out: scope can make or break a project.
We are now approaching our Phase 1 submission.
Our deliverables include:
GitHub repository
Project README
A 2-minute demo video
For anyone participating in a hackathon:
Avoid rushing into development.
Spend more time understanding the problem.
Once that foundation is clear, execution becomes much easier.
We are still learning and iterating.
But now it feels like we are building something real — not just submitting a project.
Will share our Phase 1 results soon.
Team ALPHANEXUS
Guidewire DEVTrails 2026