Hack Attack
Next Friday, the developers at globaldev will be downing their usual day-to-day tools as we run the first hack day at Global Personals.
A hack day is best described as an intense piece of research and development resulting in software prototypes built over the course of one or two days.
During the globaldev hack day, participants have one day to work individually or in teams to produce a “hack” centred around the White Label Dating platform, ecosystem or business.
Although traditionally the realm of developers, we want this hack day to be accessible to everyone within the team: developers, user expereience, QA, project managers, operations, even the Technical Director who doesn’t get the chance to get his hands dirty that often… Participants are encouraged to form small teams to work together on a hack, often with people that they don’t necessarily work with on a day-to-day basis.
A hack does not have to be a software hack: it could also be hardware-based, or completely non-technical. A non-technical hack could be a visualisation of data from the WLD platform, or some way of keeping everyone up to date with project statuses by using a whiteboard. Anything goes, as long as it’s focussed around WLD.
The hack day is primarily a learning experience, but it should also be about getting something done in a short period of time. At the end of the day, all participants must give a two-minute lightning talk to present their hack to the other participants, and a judging panel made up of non-participants. Once all talks are over, the judging panel will decide upon a number of categories for which the winning participant(s) will receive a small prize.
Benefits of a Hack Day
Hack days are…
- A brilliant way to discover new ideas: employees at GP are always coming up with ideas on how to improve the platform, or to streamline the development process, or to reuse data we’re already collecting; most of the time we don’t have the time to explore all of these ideas, so a hack day is a great way to give people the freedom to come up with the next profit- increasing project.
- A great morale booster for the participants: they get to work on something new and novel, doing something that’s outside their normal work; they also get to work with people they may not normally work with, increasing paths of communications throughout the team; participants can also be inspired by the hacks that other people come up with.
- A wonderful way to learn: by working on something outside the realm of regular platform work participants get to broaden their knowledge of new technologies, other programming languages, different paradigms. What’s learned can be channelled back into their regular work in terms of a better understanding of what they’re doing, or new insight on why things need to be done in a particular way.
Hack Days are not…
- An excuse to have a lazy day in the office: everyone is expected to join in and build or make something that can be presented at the end of the day.
- Going to produce finished products: everything’s done in a day, so you can’t expect things to be production ready in that time.
- Guaranteed to come up with the next £1m idea: there’s absolutely no guarantee that a hack will lead on to a huge revenue earner, but the lessons learned and the inspiration imparted through the process will help improve communication, technology understanding and idea generation throughout the team.
For the participants, a hack day is a challenge: build something given severe time constraints, but with the freedom that what is built can come from their own imagination and desire. Most participants will leave a hack day with new knowledge and a renewed vigour for development, that can lead to extending their ability to deliver results during the regular 9-5.
Some people find it difficult to instantly see the benefits of spending a day with team members essentially “playing” with the system and new technologies but, in addition to the points raised above, we’re likely to come out with new knowledge to help us build a better platform, or ideas for new features on the sites: all of which help WLD to grow and in turn help partners to bring in more revenue. If companies like Twitter run internal hack days, then why shouldn’t we?
Just the One?
The benefits of providing a framework that encourages innovation are of huge benefit to GP. If the hack day is a success, it could become a regular event within the company.
Hack days are generally seen as a geeky affair, where developers get to hack at code, but they can also be a fantastic way for members of other departments within the company to get more involved with the product development. People can team up to produce a hack with a developer, or could come up with an “office hack” that is of benefit to the environment everyone works in.
We’ll be reporting back both during and after the event so people can see the types of projects that are being worked on. Keep and eye on globaldev for updates!
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