On the 12th of July, many people started their day as any other, but for 13 people in Sarajevo that day was special. It was the first day of “Klika Praksa 2021 Summer Edition”, and those 13 people were the new interns ready to venture into a new IT adventure. There was an Android Developer position waiting for me and I was intrigued to see how it would all go down.

The first impressions were not amazing, as I noticed that we were all very different people, so I thought that this whole thing would not work out. During the first week, that first impression really ate me up because it seemed that I was unfortunately right. However, as time went by, I realized more and more just how wrong I was. Our common problem to finish the project brought us all together. We were like Rebellion vs The Empire, the project was like this new big anime villain, and we were the protagonists meant to defeat it. The best way to put it is that the project was our Sauron and we were The Fellowship.

Many different people with very different backgrounds, but with the same goal, and so The Fellowship was formed. Just like Dwarves, Humans, Elves, Mages and Hobbits had to work together to stop Sauron, BE, FE, Android, iOS and QA teams had to work together to finish the project. With each task completed and every bug fixed, it felt as if a new orc was defeated. And of course, no Fellowship is complete without Gandalf and his help. Our Gandalf were our mentors and our PO/SM, who with their patience, skills and advice, helped us grow our skills and finish what we had started.

And with each and every sprint we grew as developers, as a team, but also as a community. Real friendships were formed not just on a business level, and real skills were developed that will last us a lifetime. Together we helped each other grow our skills in each of our specific areas of interest, as well as grow as people. Each and every team had its purpose and a set of skills that had to be utilised to finish each sprint. During the two and a half months of this internship, not only did I learn new skills but also the true meaning of a team, and that is: “Strong as an individual, but invincible as team.”

Of course there were issues and some minor discords, but what started as a simple colleague relationship during the scorching days of July grew into a true friendship which later on turned into some kind of a beta version of a family by the end of this rainy September. None of this would have been possible without the challenging but still friendly environment created by our PO/SM, mentors and everybody else in Klika. I’m thankful for all of it!