Hacking the hackathon organizing team, part 1: Process means progress
Team structure, working Agile, and “the routine” needed to get your team running like a well-oiled machine
This article is the first of a three part series covering the different aspects of team management as part of a hackathon organizing team. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 when they come out — these articles will go into the nitty gritty “team” part of team management!
For the past three years, I have been heavily involved with nwPlus, a student club at the University of British Columbia dedicated to organizing multiple hackathons on campus. Most notably, we are the team behind nwHacks — Western Canada’s largest hackathon, UBC Local Hack Day — the largest Local Hack Day in North America, and cmd-f — Vancouver’s first and largest all-female* hackathon.
During my time at nwPlus, I watched our team grow from 19 to 40 members, expand from 1 hackathon to 8+ events, and rebrand from the club called StartupStorm to nwPlus — all while taking roles on each level of the team as a nwHacks Logistics Coordinator, nwHacks Logistics Director, and most recently, Co-President. These accomplishments were only made possible thanks to a killer organizing team, and in this article series, I will talk about what we did at nwPlus to achieve just that.
With a 40-member team taking on all areas of hackathon organization, partnering with real companies, and serving thousands of real students, our scope is quite similar to that of a small company and it is important that we run like one too! In this first part of my series, I will go into detail about the processes and routines used at nwPlus to keep the team organized and open to growth.
The team structure 👫
The nwPlus Team has subteams covering the different areas of hackathon organization including marketing, logistics, engagement, sponsorship, development, and design. At the beginning of the academic year, we welcome two 1st/2nd year reps who get the opportunity to rotate between any two subteams of their choice.
As a parent organization, it is essential that all of our events are given the same amount of love and care that make them distinctly nwPlus, in terms of everything from website designs to the friendly faces leading on the day-of. Apart from three event-specific logistics subteams, all of the other subteams at nwPlus work throughout the year to support all three events. This is to ensure that they stay consistent and are not treated like separate entities, both internally and externally.
With regards to the role hierarchy:
- 2–6 Coordinators (actual role names may vary) make up the bulk of each subteam and work together to deliver their aspect of the hackathon (shown in grey).
- The Director is the team lead and project manager for their subteam’s operations (shown in green).
- The President(s) and Treasurer (dubbed the Pres n’ Tres team) oversee all of the processes in the nwPlus organization, smoothing out any bumps between subteams, and filling in the gaps wherever needed (shown in purple).
Although there exists a role hierarchy, we emphasize being a decentralized organization where a member’s title is just a name, decisions are made as a team, and ideas are encouraged at all levels of the team structure. This incoming year, we are looking to switch to a project-based format that gives Coordinators more opportunities to lead and spearhead their own initiatives. The nwPlus organizing year runs from May until April the following year.
Getting down to business: the Workflow 📍
As a largely computer science-oriented club, you may notice in this article that many of our practices are similar to that of Agile software development. Agile is an iterative approach towards rapid product development that allows us to continually improve and respond quickly to changes.
The product backlog, or “Big timeline”
At the beginning of the organizing year, directors spend time planning out their roadmap and setting important deadlines for their respective subteams in the nwPlus-wide Big Timeline. These deadlines can include application openings, website launches, marketing campaigns, and sponsorship targets.
The purpose of the Big Timeline is to ensure that the whole team is aware of each subteams’ timelines and plans for the year, while giving a clear overview of the nwPlus year as a whole. There is lots of passing back and forth between subteams, and tasks can overlap and get confusing when the club is running multiple events throughout the year. This Big Timeline helps keep progress transparent, encourages early goal-planning, and holds subteams accountable for their own deadlines.
Task Boards
In Agile Development, a sprint is a predefined interval of time where a team works to complete a set amount of work. Task boards are commonly used during these sprints to assign tasks and visualize the team’s progress. When I led the nwHacks logistics subteam in 2018–2019, I created and assigned tasks at the beginning of each month, allowing the team to work in monthly “sprints”.
The key to effective task boarding is for tasks to be broken down into smaller subtasks that can be completed within 1 sprint, and that each person should not have more than 2–3 subtasks “in progress” at any given time. Realistically, nobody is ever actively working on 4+ things at the same time, and it is easier to track progress when individual tasks are being finished rather than having 4 “in progress” tasks for months on end.
As a team lead, I found that it was very helpful to add any potential tasks to the backlog whenever they come to mind — you’ll likely forget them by the time your next “sprint planning” session comes around, and the planning becomes much easier when you can just grab tasks from the backlog.
Making these effective: Meetings 🕐
At nwPlus, there are three types of regularly-occurring meetings:
- All-hands meetings are mandatory for everyone at nwPlus and happen bi-weekly. These meetings are dedicated to keep everybody updated with every subteam’s progress while being a place to make decisions and announcements concerning everybody.
- Roundtable meetings happen during the off-weeks of All-hands (also bi-weekly) and are mandatory for at least two people per team (one usually being the director). These are discussion-based meetings on issues that span two or more subteams.
- Subteam meetings are held weekly and make up the “meat” of our work at nwPlus. This is where all of the task planning, discussions, and decisions are made for each subteam and get summarized at the following All-hands/Roundtable.
At nwPlus, all meeting minutes are located in a centralized database with the purpose of maximizing transparency and allowing members to read through other subteams’ minutes as they wish.
Meetings are vital for everyone to stay on the same page and cooperate together as a team. Some people may groan at the thought of meetings, but it is likely because 1. They are too long, or 2. They are inefficient. Here is how we tackle both of those issues:
Maximize in-person meetings and HAVE AN AGENDA
At nwPlus, our meetings are loosely based on the Agile Scrum standup and are structured like so:
- Updates are the “What did I work on?” of a Scrum standup. These should be quick updates on what team members worked on this past week.
- Discussion is the “meat” of the meeting where issues are brought up, discussed, and decided on, which includes the “What issues are blocking me?” of the Scrum standup.
- TODOs are the “What am I going to work on?” of a Scrum standup, where the result of the meeting’s discussions are turned into action items to be completed by the following meeting.
Meeting agendas should be prepared in advance, so members can feel free to drop in their own discussion items when they come to mind during the week. This way, we don’t accidentally miss any important topics, and we can eyeball the meeting length based on the number of discussion items. It is also valuable to maximize in-person meetings compared to remote ones, as it is harder for members to stay engaged and freely contribute their ideas when in a video call format.
Never go overtime!
If there is one thing I learned from attending and running literally hundreds of nwPlus meetings, it is that meetings should never go overtime. A long meeting is usually a sign that the discussion is either losing its focus, the agenda was not well planned, or the topic was meant for an entirely different meeting. Regardless of how important the discussion is, people will inevitably start tuning out and losing focus, which will lead to negative attitudes towards these meetings in the future. Some tips to stay on time:
- Prepare an agenda with an appropriate number of discussion items that will fit within the meeting time. (<5 topics works best at nwPlus)
- When the discussion starts going off tangent, don’t be afraid to steer the conversation back to the original point.
- When the discussion becomes too narrow and irrelevant to the majority of the team in attendance, ask to park the discussion and continue it either on Slack or after the meeting.
- If the discussion ends up being too big to continue after the meeting or on Slack, set up a separate meeting altogether.
The tech stack: Our workspaces ⚙️
With a team so large and cross-functional, we are bound to use many different technologies throughout the year to help bring our events to life. Although some technologies such as Github and Figma may be specific to certain subteams, all members at nwPlus frequently use Notion, Slack, Google Drive, and Google Calendar.
A documented hackathon is a well-organized hackathon
At nwPlus, Notion is our primary documentation hub where each subteam has their own page to customize and manage all of their task statuses, meeting minutes, FAQ’s, retrospectives, and plans for the rest of the team to see. Larger files such as receipts and design assets are stored in Google Drive, and meetings are scheduled on Google Calendar.
Members should build a habit of searching through and contributing to the documentation on their own, as information can easily be lost or miscommunicated when the docs aren’t kept up to date. Moreover, well maintained documentation can act as a guide for future organizers to recreate and scale out events while avoiding mistakes that were made in the past—a great example of this working in action is when we used our documentation to expand from 1 hackathon to 8+ events in the span of two years!
In case my enthusiasm for documentation wasn’t evident enough, I wrote an entire article on documenting nwHacks 2019 and spoke at Hackcon VII in Pennsylvania about the practices at nwPlus!
Prioritizing transparent communication
At nwPlus, we emphasize the importance of transparent communication and expect all hackathon related discussions to be made in public Slack channels. There are no DMs, directors-only private chats, or decisions made without consulting the team. It may seem time-consuming to loop in multiple people for every “quick” decision, but you end up saving time from needing to make changes, reexplain, or resolve any miscommunications that arise from leaving people out of the loop.
To prevent clutter, all discussions are made as threads under a topic message — this allows discussions to be searchable on Slack, and to maintain accountability for any decisions made.
It’s time to hit the ground running! 🏃♂️
You’ve probably realized by now that there are many elements involved when curating a routine that works best for your team. Do keep in mind that there is not a single formula to this, and what works at nwPlus might not always work in your situation. However, staying organized is key to preventing fires and all-nighters down the road, and will significantly increase your chances of improving to be even bigger and better the next time around. In no time, your team will be chugging along with the year’s antics while feeling like part of something much bigger than yourselves (and you are!).
Stay tuned for part 2 and 3 where I will discuss all-things people related, narrowing in on the “team” part of team management! 👋
Words by Anita Tse, Outgoing nwPlus Co-President 2019/2020
