New Hackathon in Tinkoff.ru

Hello! My name is Andrey. In Tinkoff.ru I am responsible for decision-making systems and business process management. I decided to radically reconsider the stack of systems and technologies in my project; I really needed fresh ideas. And so, not so long ago we had an internal hackathon on the topic of decision-making in Tinkoff.ru.

The whole organizational part was taken over by the hr, and, running ahead, I would say that everything turned out to be bombing: the guys were glad about the gift merchandise, tasty food, ottomans, piladies, cookies, toothbrushes and towels - in short, everything was at a high level and, moreover cute and at home.

I just had to come up with a task, gather a team of experts / jury, select the submitted applications, and then select the winners.
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But it was not so easy. I want to share my thoughts on what questions it is worth finding an answer in advance so as not to screw it up.

Why do you need a hackathon?

A hackathon should have a goal.

What do you personally (your product, project, team, company) want to receive from this event?

This is the main question, and all your decisions should correspond to the answer to it.
For example, the topic of decision making is very extensive and complex, and I was well aware that I definitely could not take and run applications made on the hackathon in the prod. But I can get new technological ideas, and prototypes, as confirmation of the applicability of these ideas to solve the problems posed. This was my goal, and, in the end, I consider it achieved.

Why hakaton participants?

Often, companies make a mistake and expect cool business ideas from new teams for participating teams. But hackathon is an event primarily for developers, and they often have other interests. Most programmers want to escape from everyday work and try new technologies for themselves, change the stack, or, conversely, apply the usual stack for themselves in a new domain. Having understood this, I completely took the business problem away for myself, leaving the hackathon participants the maximum freedom to choose technical solutions.

Most of the employees involved in the hackathon are not for the prize, but, nevertheless, the prize must be worthy of competing at work without sleep at the weekend! We gave the winners a trip to Sochi for 4 days with full payment of the road, accommodation and ski passes.

Why hakaton organizers?

The hr team that organizes the hackathon usually has its own goals such as promoting the hr-brand, increasing employee interest and involvement. And, of course, these goals need to be considered. For example, we were ready to give the winner of our hackathon a steep and expensive prize (more expensive than on the previous hackathon) - but in the end we abandoned this idea, because this would demotivate people to participate in further events.

Are you sure your topic is interesting to someone?

I was not sure. Therefore, I made a draft of the assignment, went with him to the developers of different business lines and different stacks and asked for feedback - is the assignment clear, interesting, implemented in the allotted time, etc.? I was faced with the fact that it is very difficult to fit the main point of your work in the last 5 years in a couple of paragraphs of the text. I had to spend a lot of these iterations and long to hone the wording. The text of the job, which turned out, I still do not like it. But despite this, we received applications from employees of as many as 15 different departments from 5 regions - this suggests that the task turned out to be interesting.

Are you helpful during the hackathon?

During the hackathon, I caught myself thinking that as long as the teams coded, I and the team of experts were either idle or doing our own thing, because we are not needed here. We periodically approached the teams' tables, were interested in how things were, offered help, but more often we received the answer “everything is OK, we are working” (read “do not interfere”). Some teams for all 24 hours never shared intermediate results. As a result, several teams failed to conduct a full-fledged demo, limited to slides with screenshots. It was worth more actively explaining to the children that it is important to share intermediate results so that we can direct projects in the right direction along the hackathon, help plan time and overcome difficulties.

Perhaps, it would be worthwhile even to introduce 2-3 mandatory checkpoints, in which teams would talk about their progress.

Why do we need experts and a jury?

I recommend recruiting experts to the team (those who help teams during the hackathon) and the jury (those who choose the winners) not only people who are knowledgeable in their field, but also people who will be as active and energetic as possible. It is important to help teams during the hackathon (and even to be sometimes intrusive, although they won't thank you for it), to ask them the right questions both during the hackathon and during the final presentations.

Can you calmly look in the eyes of the losers?

In the morning, after a night in front of the monitor screen, the soul of a programmer is the most vulnerable. And if you were somewhere unjust, inconsistent in your actions or decisions, you will definitely recall this insult. Therefore, it is important to pre-define the criteria by which the jury will select the winners. We handed out sheets with a list of criteria to each team and hung them on a common board, so that participants always remember them.

I also tried to give all the participants a short feedback that I liked about their work and what was not enough to win.

Total

Honestly, by and large, I didn’t care who won because it would not affect the achievement of my goals. But I tried to make it so that the decision was fair, transparent and understandable to everyone (although I was not on the jury). In addition, the level of warmth and comfort offered by the organizers allowed the participants to feel good, and we would receive positive feedback and readiness to participate in further such events from them.