7 Things Hackathons Can Teach Product Managers
What Hackathons Can Teach You About Your Role, Your Team, and Yourself
Over the last few years, hackathons have become ever more popular, but what exactly are they? Although the word itself might conjure up images of masked figures, dimly lit rooms, and a matrix of green text dancing across computer monitors, hackathons are nothing to do with ‘hacking’ in the Hollywood sense. Instead, the term comes from the idea of ‘hacking together’ a solution that helps solve a real-world problem. Put simply, it’s an event where technically minded people come together to collaboratively create a solution. The goal is to pick a problem and solve it within an extremely condensed timescale.
There is a widespread preconception that hackathons are just for developers, and traditionally this may have been true. But with the growing popularity of hackathons, we’ve also seen a proliferation in their diversity. Cross-functional projects now leave space for people with various skill sets to contribute, be they developers, QA testers, hardware enthusiasts or even designers.
Enter Product Managers
Recently, I was fortunate enough to take part in a hackathon with our team at Koodoo. As well as being an amazing opportunity to collaborate with colleagues outside of the remit of our everyday work, it also forced me to reflect on my role, and the role of a Product Manager, within the wider team. This article is a summary of some of those reflections. So without further ado, here are seven of my key takeaways for how hackathons can help Product Managers hone their skills:
1. Collaboratively Identify and Validate Customer Pain Points
Although distinct from the normal product creation and iteration process, the best hackathons are relentless in their focus on the problem and the user. Here, the skillset of a PM can come in pretty handy. We tend to spend a good proportion of our time identifying, validating, and prioritising customer pain points, so PMs have a key role to play in helping guide the team during a hackathon’s early stages. It’s a great chance to practice aligning user value and business needs, as well as pitching your idea and getting buy-in from your team.
2. Help Your Team Understand What You Do
A constant source of existential dread for many a PM is that people (including ourselves) are not always clear what exactly we contribute. Contrary to the Venn diagram below, PMs tend to sit in the intersection between the ‘what’, the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of product development. Hackathons provide a great opportunity to educate your colleagues on how you contribute to each of these areas and momentarily relieve the persistent angst and accompanying imposter syndrome that goes with the territory of the role.
3. Experiment with Moonshots
Ever wanted to test a new feature, or validate an assumption, but worried that it was less likely to deliver business value compared to some of the more assured alternatives? Whilst the stakes might be too high to take big risks in the normal product lifecycle, hackathons provide a unique space to test that outlandish idea that’s been knocking around in the back of your head. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ve minimised the cost by only distracting the business for 24 hours. Not to mention you’ve succeeded or failed fast and hopefully learnt something about your customers too.
4. Improve Communication with the Rest of Your Team
Communication is, and always will be, one of the most important factors when it comes to team cohesion and productivity. But in a hackathon, the need for it to be both clear and concise is infinitely higher. An ever-looming deadline means that one small misinterpretation can be the difference between delivering a kick-ass solution or embarrassingly having nothing of value to show at the end of the allotted time.
The condensed life-cycle of a hackathon also means that the traditional specification to the developer/designer handoff process doesn’t always work. Why not then view this as a great chance to try new and different ways of working together, where interactions between people are valued above ‘traditional’ process?
5. Scope and Planning MVP Solutions
Producing a valuable solution in such a short period of time is one of the biggest challenges a hackathon presents. When teams run into trouble it’s often because of one of the following reasons:
- They don’t take the time at the beginning to decide, discuss, and plan what everyone is doing;
- They fail to prioritise functionality in terms of what constitutes an MVP solution;
- They don’t check in regularly to see how people are progressing and adjusting the scope of the project accordingly.
When it comes to software development it can be particularly tricky to estimate accurate timeframes for completing the various tasks involved. Creating a detailed plan with accurate deadlines seems pretty unrealistic within the space of a hackathon then.
An alternative approach is to work with your team to prioritise the essential functionality. This helps mitigate the risk of having nothing functional to show at the end of the hackathon and ensures you get the bare essentials done before moving on to the ‘should-haves’ and, if you have time, the ‘nice-to-haves’.
Checking in as a team at regular intervals allows you to collectively review your progress and respond where required by adjusting the scope or quality of your solution.
6. User Testing and Reprioritising Features
Whilst your team are busy building, there’s a great opportunity to go out and test your proposition with rough prototypes or, even better, what your team have built so far. This doesn’t mean you need to find hundreds of people for user testing. In fact, you only need five users to catch 85% of usability problems based on research conducted by Jakob Nielsen and Tom Landauer. Comparatively, it’s worth noting that if you forego any user testing you’re likely to find 0% of usability problems.
Your regular team check-ins provide you with a chance to share your findings with the rest of your team. These can then be used to inform your ongoing prioritisation of work and, if necessary, shift focus to resolving any glaring usability issues that you’ve identified.
7. Appreciating the Value Your Team Brings
Working shoulder-to-shoulder with your team, in the high-intensity environment that hackathons create, gives you a much greater appreciation of each team member’s contribution. It also allows you to witness, first-hand, the sheer number of decisions they have to make on a daily basis, the trade-offs they have to consider, and what’s possible when everyone applies a ruthlessly single-minded focus to delivery. This appreciation and empathy should reinforce the respect felt between product, design and engineering, yielding more productive relationships both inside and outside the timeframe of the hackathon.
To conclude, hackathons come in various shapes and sizes, and product managers might not be able to contribute meaningfully to every single one. However, the right type of hackathons provide the freedom and space for product managers to hone their skills in a low-risk environment. It allows them to test creative and innovative solutions, free from the constraints of assessing code reliability or adherence to design systems. And most importantly, it’s a chance to exercise one of the most important tenants of product development: that done is better than great.
