10 Years of Research With and On Hackathons

Falk, Jeanette; Halskov, Kim

doi:10.1145/3357236.3395543

Cited by 36 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…The characteristics of hackathons provide different benefits and challenges. Examples of challenges are prototypes that do not receive sufficient follow-up work [1,2,9] and the stress of putting regular work aside [8]. Contradictions and tradeoffs are something apparent in the hackathon phenomenons.…”

Section: Figure 1 Phases and Activities In Hackathons [4]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Falk Olesen and Halskov [1] emphasize that hackathon organizers need to tune its characteristics to achieve the wanted benefits for the target group. Nolte et al [2] argue that participants and organizers should be aware of the tradeoff between developing a product that will continue after the hackathon, and achieving individual goals or working on radically new ideas that do not fit any existing product lines.…”

Section: Figure 1 Phases and Activities In Hackathons [4]mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The phenomenon of corporate hackathons has emerged as a popular approach for encouraging innovation within established software development companies [1], inspired by the collegiate and civic events [1,2]. The word originates from the combination of the words "hack" and "marathon" [3], where developers use a limited and defined amount of time to create a minimum viable product (or at least something to show at a demo) [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From the existing research on hackathons, it is likely that the practice positively influences several of these five dimensions. However, as most research on hackathons focuses on collegiate or civic events [1,2], there is a need for research on corporate hackathons when understanding the impact on productivity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Improving productivity through corporate hackathons: A multiple case study of two large-scale agile organizations

Moe¹,

Ulfsnes²,

Stray³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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Softwaredevelopment companies organize hackathons to encourage innovation. Despite many benefits of hackathons, in large-scale agile organizations where many teams work together, stopping the ongoing work results in a significant decrease in the immediate output. Motivated by the need to understand whether and how to run hackathons, we investigated how the practice affects productivity on the individual and organizational levels. By mapping the benefits and challenges to an established productivity framework, we found that hackathons improve developers' satisfaction and wellbeing, strengthen the company culture, improve performance (as many ideas are tested), increase activity (as the ideas are developed quickly), and improve communication and collaboration (because the social network is strengthened). Addressing managerial concerns, we found that hackathons also increase efficiency and flow because people learn to complete work and make progress quickly, and they build new competence. Finally, with respect to virtual hackathons we found that developers work more in isolation because tasks are split between team members resulting in less collaboration. This means that some important, expected hackathon values in virtual contexts require extra effort and cannot be taken for granted.

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Section: Figure 1 Phases and Activities In Hackathons [4]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Figure 1 Phases and Activities In Hackathons [4]mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Improving productivity through corporate hackathons: A multiple case study of two large-scale agile organizations

Moe¹,

Ulfsnes²,

Stray³

et al. 2022

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While hackathons provide benefits such as improving and fostering internal innovation, expanding competencies, and networking [3,4,6,[9][10][11][12], several challenges have been reported. Examples of challenges are prototypes that do not get sufficient follow-up work [7,9,11], stress by putting regular work aside [4] and issues associated with hacker culture and low self-esteem reported by Paganini and Gama [12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innovation in Large-Scale Agile - Benefits and Challenges of Hackathons When Hacking from Home

Ulfsnes

Stray

Moe

et al. 2021

Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming – Workshops

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Hackathons are events in which diverse teams work together to explore and develop solutions, software, or even ideas. Hackathons have been recognized not only as public events for hacking but also as a corporate mechanism for innovation. Hackathons are a way for established large-scale agile organizations to achieve increased employee wellbeing as well as being a curator for innovation and developing new products. The sudden transition to the work-from-home mode caused by the COVID-19 pandemic first put many corporate events requiring collocation, such as hackathons, temporarily on hold and then motivated companies to find ways to hold these events virtually. In this paper, we report our findings from investigating hackathons in the context of a large agile company by first exploring the general benefits and challenges of hackathons and then trying to understand how they were affected by the virtual setup. We conducted nine interviews, surveyed 23 employees, and analyzed a hackathon demo. We found that hackathons provide both individual and organizational benefits of innovation, personal interests, and acquiring new skills and competencies. However, several challenges such as added stress due to stopping the regular work, employees fearing not having enough contribution to deliver, and potential mismatch between individual and organizational goals were also found. With respect to the virtual setup, we found that virtual hackathons are not diminishing the innovation benefits. However, some negative effects surfaced on the social and networking side.

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