Future Day – Brainstorming, planning, and implementation

The future as a guest

Numerous girls and boys switched sides on today's National Future Day. For the first time, they had the opportunity to get a taste of working life in a company and look over their parents' shoulders as they go about their daily work. The aim of this day is to show young people new horizons and life models and to promote equality between men and women. In this way, the next generation of workers is given the courage and self-confidence to take their future into their own hands.

Companies throughout Switzerland opened their doors, including zeit ag: five young people visited us today. The young people were allowed to develop their own business ideas and play an active role in shaping them from brainstorming to implementation, so that they were not just taught dry theory, but were able to experience exciting practice first-hand. We explain step by step which stages we mastered together with the young people:

Step 1: Marshmellow challenge

After the welcome round, we carried out a challenging marshmellow challenge with the young people. The aim of this challenge is to build the tallest tower out of spaghetti, string, tape and a marshmellow. The real intention behind this is, of course, for the young people to have fun and get to know their teammates better.

In a second step, we worked with the young people to develop ideas for an innovative mobile app that would be relevant to their everyday lives. The best idea for implementation was selected democratically from these ideas and presented to CEO Stefan Müller. He gave us the green light to plan and implement the project.

Step 3: Story mapping

In a third step, the idea was developed further and individual functions were worked out. We created a "story mapping", which serves to record all the work steps that the customer would like to carry out with our app. These work steps (or functions) define the framework of the "MVP" (Minimum Viable Product) for the app to be realized.

Step 4: Planning and implementation

In a fourth step, the young people paid a visit to the "Product Management" department. In the planning phase of the product, important development steps and milestones are defined here and integrated into the existing roadmap. The young people learned that as a company, you always pursue medium and long-term goals to which new projects must be aligned.

Step 5: Marketing

After a refreshment at McDonalds, the journey to our product continued in the direction of marketing. Together with our marketing planner Lena Ingold, the young software developers determined when and through which channels the new app should be publicized and which target group should be addressed. They also learned about the various marketing tools.

Step 6: Development

Finally, it was time to start developing the app, as the new product needed to be presented to potential customers in the foreseeable future. So we went to the development department and got to know the zeit ag developers and their working tools. The "Code Combat" platform, where the young people were able to learn their first programming skills, also guaranteed a high fun factor. They competed in three teams and the best team received a small prize.

Step 7: Sales

The development of the new mobile app was completed - then it was time to sell the product. In the sales department, the young people worked with the sales staff to develop strategies to actively promote and successfully sell their app.

Step 8: Support

Last but not least, the young people in the project management and helpdesk (support) teams learned that there is more to being a successful software company than just developing an application. After all, customers want to be looked after and supported in a joint project and beyond. The hardware department, where the time recording and access peripherals are prepared and delivered, also received a visit from the team of young strategists.

This rounded off an eventful day and the young people were released back into the care of their parents so that they could look over their shoulders for the rest of the day and have one or two things explained to them in more detail.

We hope that the young people had an exciting and varied Future Day with us and that they learned a lot and were perhaps able to identify trends for future career prospects. We are convinced that investing in the skilled workers of the future will be an important success factor and that all companies are called upon to participate in this investment.