A project’s journey - from inception to reflection

KMS was in a frenzy hackathon spirit in the last 4 days: we had a record 23 teams from 70+ engineers/managers competing in the event. The creativity and results delivered from these projects were through the roof. Our judges had a hard time choosing the winners. Which brings out today's topic: what does it take to win a hackathon project? A project starts with an idea. Usually it is something not working quite well or completely missing. It frustrates your customers or yourself, you want to make it right. Does your idea have enough novelty and imagination? Does it excite you? Will it excite your customers and judges? But an idea is not a product. From idea to product, you need to put on the hat of a product manager: Can you name you customer? What specific pain are you addressing for them? Can you articulate it in 1 or 2 sentences? What is the end user experience you want to deliver? Can you measure the results? You might even ask yourself: what other problems should I consider? Can I get higher Return Of Investment (ROI) if I solve them instead? Now you have a product definition: with a clear end user experience you want to deliver, it is time for project management to kick in. In a hackathon project you only have 2-4 days, so you need to really focus on the core use case and main value proposition. It is always better to do ONE thing well than do many mediocre things. Do you have a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? Can you make something demo-able in front of judges? How would you divide the work between team members? Do you have some milestones and checkpoints to know you are on track of the plan? How do you know you are late? Then you start coding. You will run into blockers for sure, something you have not planned or thought of. Your problem solving skill is required here. Do you have a mechanism of collecting data, form hypotheses, then use controlled change to validate your hypotheses? When we are in a frenzy mode of rapid development, it is tempting to change many things at the same time and hope one of them can fix the problem. Well how many monkeys do we need in front of keyboards to write a Hamlet? Now the demo day. You only have 5 minutes to showcase your achievement. How do you catch the attention of judges? Can you articulate your problem with the right showmanship? Do you have the elevator pitch for your value proposition? Do you have live demonstration? If you only talk over PPT, it is very unlikely you can impress the judges... Ah, it is over. No matter you win or not, I hope you had fun. But you are not done yet. Have a retrospective session with your team members, reflect on what has gone well and what could have been better. “We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.“ John Dewey