Secrets of successful hackathons

Tsai says winning teams are provided an interim budget to support initial development and business planning as part of this process. Upon completing this exercise, they can then submit a proposal to the planning team for the opportunity to obtain an even larger budget.

Besides funding, team members may also have some of their time sponsored. Tsai says that team members can allocate a certain amount of their working hours toward the proposal with approval from their line manager.

Balter takes a similar approach at Bunnings by aligning hackathons with tech capacity planning.

“[The winning idea] sort of gets slotted straight into quarterly planning so that we can then make sure that the idea is implemented. So the team knows that they won’t have to go on and justify a business case,” she says.

Investing in winning proposals may produce a virtuous cycle. In addition to backing the implementation in question, this support will help attract and retain talented developers who want to work on exciting projects.

“[It shows them] we’re constantly focused on innovation. So it’s not just working on the BAU [business as usual] — we’re always looking to the third horizon of ideas that will help the business and help pivot the business,” says Balter.

Backing hackathon proposals also advances collaboration and culture around problem-solving at the organization. Here, Azarzar gives two key reasons why CIOs should consider organizing hackathons.

“First, if you have a real pain that you want to solve quickly and you want all hands-on deck. Second, you want to encourage innovation in the organization,” he says.

Transforming culture

Azarzar’s point about encouraging innovation is worth further analysis. Most professionals may view hackathons as a business activity that creates innovation. Rarely do people view hackathons as a way to create an innovation culture.

Tsai’s experience at Taiwan Mobile lends credence to this idea. Since beginning their hackathons, he has seen the culture improve yearly. While the company has rolled out numerous products and improvements as a direct result of hackathons, he believes the real advantage is in the more profound shift in employee perspective, which leads to them pitching more ideas, even when no prize is at stake.

“I think the real benefit is to change employees’ mindset … that they can be an innovator, that they want to be an innovator, and that they can innovate on their job,” he says.