This year’s Triad Challenge will take place on the 17th and 18th February. It will see 28 technology students from the University of Northampton (UON) work in teams as they apply their skills to a real-life scenario. I have attended the last two Triad Challenges as a student, and this year’s event will be particularly meaningful for me as I’ll be experiencing it from a very different perspective.
The Triad Challenge – A brief history
The Triad Challenge is in its fifth year now. Split into teams, the students have 48 hours to complete a task set by ex-UON graduates who all work at Triad and who are on-site for the duration of the challenge.
A lot of thought goes into each brief. The challenge is to strike a careful balance between real-life scenarios and what undergraduates can reasonably deliver in newly formed teams under extreme time pressure.
My experience
The Triad Challenge is scary and fun at the same time. It is daunting. Whilst you get to work with your friends, you are also working in an unfamiliar environment with an aggressive timescale.
During the last challenge, I found myself taking on a Business Analyst and Project Lead role, largely because there was a gap in the team for exploring client needs and priorities. It felt natural for me to support my team by exploring the client’s needs and priorities, as well as coordinating and utilising my team’s skill set, and I realised I enjoyed it. The need to turn over large, well-structured documents quickly for approval really pushed me to think logically and in a structured manner, always keeping stakeholder requirements in mind.
The experience made me appreciate the importance of prioritisation. We were working in such an incredibly short time frame that we had to focus on a bare-bones minimal viable product (MVP) before anything else. I realised that in this scenario, a viable product was more important than an incomplete product with flashy additions.
What I learned from the Triad Challenge
My advice to the students taking part in this year’s Triad Challenge would be to work as a team and support one another. Embrace the variety of experiences and interests among your teammates and find a way for everyone to play to their strengths.
Don’t be afraid to express how you feel. When allocating and agreeing roles, try to avoid pushing people into areas they are unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with, unless, of course, they have deliberately chosen to step outside their comfort zone.
The challenge runs for two days. It’s hard to get the required development done in this time frame. And that is why it’s paramount that you have the right people in the right roles from the start. I know from personal experience that this is easier said than done when you’re under pressure and tired. For me, this reinforced how important it is to stay focused on what delivers value, rather than what simply looks impressive.
Finally, having a working or nearly working system is better than something technical that doesn’t meet the client’s needs. So, focus on the MVP before considering any ‘wow factors’ or additional functionality.
Leaving something extra behind
Triad has a mantra of ‘leaving the client with something extra behind’, and I experienced this directly during the challenges I attended. In the challenges that I attended, Triad Managing Director Adrian Leer hosted a CV workshop. Having the leader of a Plc run a CV workshop is not something that you’d expect to see, but it was brilliant. A welcome break from the pressure of the challenge, and it was instrumental in getting my CV up to scratch. Thank you, Adrian!
Working at Triad
The first time I heard of Triad was at a UON employability event. Some of the ex-UON graduates presented, and I liked the sound of working for a business involved in technology programmes with clear public benefit, such as work supporting organisations like the Met Office and DESNZ. The Triad Challenges gave me a taste of what it is like to undertake a consultancy role. And it put me on their radar – they approached me after the event, saying that they were impressed by my performance and were keen to talk to me about working for them after I graduated. And the next thing I know, I am a Triad employee!
Triad is my first job out of university. I joined Triad in September 2025. My first Triad assignment was an internal one, and I am now working as a Data/Business Analyst at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), where I’ve been able to apply both analytical and technical skills and observe other professionals in action.
The transition from university to work isn’t easy, and my Triad colleagues couldn’t have been more helpful. I feel lucky to have a brilliant mentor (thank you, Daria!), and I am very grateful for her support, though the welcome hasn’t been limited to her. Everyone I encounter is supportive, and I intend to return the favour to new starters whenever I can. Having that support has made a significant difference as I continue to figure out what kind of impact I want my work to have longer term.
If you have a question for Michael or the Triad team, please get in touch.
