[cam-]

We did a hackathon today. Several things made it a successful hackathon. First; a Product Owner ran the early brainstorming and problem setting. This made a big difference. The engineers were coming up with new products but with the discipline of what works in defining a real product.

Next they broke up into teams of two or three and worked on a specific product idea or feature/improvement. There was a break in the middle of the day when everyone had lunch together, and then back into coding afterwards. The hackathon started at 9am and ended at 4pm with every team having working features to demo.

At least one of the features demo'd will go straight into the existing product, the others will be demo'd to other stake holders and will most likely end up in the existing product but as a more polished feature.

So in summary having a Product Owner over see the brain storming, having everyone work in the one branch together in small teams, and making the new features or products demo'able by the end of the day.