Why hackathons are important tools in our software development process
January 12, 2023
This essay was originally posted on the Vouch Engineering Blog.
At the end of 2022 Vouch held its Fall Hackathon and it was a huge success. You might be wondering — why would we prioritize a hackathon and set aside several days of development time when there are features to deliver and clients to service? The main reason we host hackathons is our long-term focus. Hackathons allow us to think outside the box and put the concerns of upcoming sprints aside to think of what could unlock value down the line.
At first glance, hackathons might seem like a risky proposition. After all, our industry is known for its focus on safety and security, and hackathons are often associated with taking risks and trying new things. This is exactly why we believe they are a great addition to our structured engineering development process.
Teams were asked to get together to implement a feature, prototype, or demo in the allotted time. After ideating and coding for a day and a half, everyone got on a Zoom to see what other teams had built. Each group had 5 minutes to present their work to our judges, who then had 3 minutes to ask questions. The judges scored projects on three dimensions: business value, implementation, and creativity. On top of that, teams could get an extra point if the judges gave a sign-off for a project to go to production with minor tweaks. This helped ensure a good balance between giving our team a chance to learn and grow, while also delivering business value. Some of this hackathon’s projects made it to production just a few short days later!
There are several other reasons why we decided to hold a hackathon this fall, though. First, we wanted to end the year on a strong note by coming together as a team and working on exciting new projects. This was especially important because our team has grown significantly over the past year (and we’re still growing!). The hackathon provided an opportunity for everyone to get to know each other a little better.
Additionally, we wanted to encourage cross-pollination of ideas and teams. By working on projects outside of their usual responsibilities, and with cross-functional partners they normally don’t have a chance to work with, our team members were able to learn more about different parts of the codebase and gain new perspectives. Hackathons are a great tool to foster collaboration and innovation within our team.
We also wanted to use the hackathon as an opportunity to experiment bottoms-up with new features that no one had thought of before. This allowed us to push the boundaries of what’s possible within our current tech stack and come up with creative solutions to the challenges we face as a company.
If you’ve worked on an engineering team before, you know how hard it is to deal with tech debt. The hackathon provided a space for our team members to tackle lingering items that they hadn’t had time to address during the year, or which were painful for others at Vouch to deal with, but which we hadn’t prioritized.
The winning team built a prospecting assistant tool for our sales team. This tool was built on top of OpenAI’s APIs and natural language processing (NLP) models, and it was designed to help our sales team quickly and easily identify potential leads and generate personalized sales pitches. The team did an incredible job of combining cutting-edge technology with a deep understanding of our business and the needs of our sales team. The result was a tool that not only impressed the judges, but also has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our sales process.
We’re proud of the winning team’s output, and we’re looking forward to seeing how the prospecting assistant tool will be integrated into our sales strategy in the coming months. This project is a great example of the innovation and creativity that our hackathons are designed to foster.
In short, our Fall Hackathon was an important event for Vouch as it helped us cultivate the collaboration, creativity, and learning-focused culture we value so much in our engineering, product, and design teams. We’re excited to see what new ideas and projects will come out of our next hackathon thanks to every one of our great team members. It’s this kind of innovation that sets us apart as a company.
PS, I wanted to take a moment to mention that the winning team’s innovative use of NLP technology inspired me to use ChatGPT to write and edit this post.
Photo: Moving Fast, by me. Previously posted on Thailand, 2023.
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