The $1,000,000 Hackathon – Watch!

A colleague just send me a link to this youtube video and I just had to share it.

Why did you share this with me Steve?  What has this go to do with Agile?… a lot actually…

It is a good question tho.  Well you see I started my career as a developer… creating software is in my blood and I think this type of event is really cool… and very Agile.

These guys pump out two weeks or more worth of work in two days.  Sure they work like mad dogs, and have a great team around them, but this is very Agile… here’s why…

They committed to the tasks, and as a self-managed team they delivered… on all the tasks.  The Scrum Master in me would love to track their velocity for that short sprint.

Ok, ok, I know i’m going to cop some abuse from the Agile purists reading this… I know this velocity is not sustainable, and yes I have read “Surviving Death March Projects”!  I just really like this idea.  Perhaps not so long an event, but the idea is great.

Image this as a team building exercise.  How well would you know everyone in the team, their personalities, their strengths, their weaknesses… amazing… and very quick.

Image this as a way to solve a pressing issue, or to open the floor to innovative ideas for future products?

These guys even bring in a ‘product owner’ to make sure the features have enough business value in their delivery.

I do have reservations as to this teams agreement on ‘good food’ (checkout 6:02 in the vid… OMG)… I just hope their Definition Of Done (DoD) is cleaner!

Imagine one of these at your work?  Perhaps invite some other companies dev teams to join in and compete… share ideas, see how each team works together.

I especially like how these guys had a ‘sprint review’ and a retro at the end.  They used this event to build a better team and sharpen their dev processes.

Now, where’s my Visual Studio… the coder blood is flowing… but I’ve got to write my back log first!

By the way, checkout the t-shirts on these guys!

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