MOBILE FIRST: Hackathon at OZON

When the release is every two weeks, new features come from the business, and technical debt requires its own - the time of hackathon comes. My name is Dmitry Antyshev, I’m an iOS developer at OZON. I’ll talk about how we conducted the first hackathon for the mobile team on February 27th.

1. Why do we need a hackathon

Often the organizers do without an answer to this question. But it will come in handy to understand what you’ll do at all (and what you won’t do exactly), where you get ideas from, how you will evaluate teams, and - not least - what you will do with the resulting code.

Below is our list of goals in the order in which they occurred to our organizing team.

- Find the time to implement what I have long wanted to do
- Show your ideas to business
- Meet newcomers
- Gather more ideas and features (and almost everyone in the OZON team is also our user)
- Estimate how much time it takes to develop features
- Spend a really useful team building

2. Where to get ideas

About half the time spent on hackathon teams spend on inventing features - we decided do not waste time, and prepare ideas in advance. First, they discussed with the team who had any ideas for features on the hackathon. There were a couple of cool ones, but I wanted more - and we decided to ask all OZON employees. We shared the Google tablet in Slack and Workplace, and got about a hundred ideas in a week. Moreover, for each feature, the author argued why this is definitely needed in the OZON application.

For example, there was an idea to create an incognito mode so that certain orders do not appear in history - it is convenient if you need to order a gift. Or download images from the gallery to order certificates with your own design. And even a gambling multiplayer game with bets, points and promotional codes.

As a result, they decided that the teams will be able to choose the one that is closer to them from the list of ideas - or offer their own. In any case, we saved time.

3. How do we hackathon

In order not to put ourselves and our colleagues in front of a choice: a weekend with family or development, we decided to hold a hackathon on a working day. Still, they left a little hardcore - the teams had 12 hours for everything. With an idea, that’s enough.

A week before the hackathon, we gathered a mobile development team to select the best ideas and share on teams.

As a result, 4 teams came to the start, in three of them there were two iOS and Android-developers, and two QA, but the fourth was the most unusual - it gathered four QA engineers. And what to expect from them, we did not know)

Here are the names of our teams:

1. Builds spin lavekha is muddied (here, by the way, I was)
2. KOTIGI
3. Dusty dumbbell
4. Quality team of our

With the “Builds Turn Lavech Muddles” team, we implemented a list of selected baskets. If you regularly order approximately the same list of products, each time you are bored to search and put them in a basket. We made a feature that allows you to save and edit saved baskets.

KOTIGI made a similar opportunity, but through a list of selected products. In addition, they did not forget about sharing - a very useful thing, for example, when ordering goods for the whole family. In the end, this led them to victory.

The guys from the “Dusty Dumbbells” filmed a widget with tracking the order and scanning the barcode when receiving the parcel in the post office. In this case, the application itself does not need to be opened.

The Our Quality Team adapted the application for visually impaired people, filed the Wheel of Fortune for promotional codes and even managed to implement the function of selling used goods.

When it was decided with teams and ideas, the guys had a week to ponder the implementation.

And on Wednesday, February 27, we arrived at 9:00. We had only 12 hours to develop features. From 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. And here is the schedule of our hackathon.



In addition to writing code, we managed to play Playstation VR.



And chopped off in Mortal Combat.



4. How did you sum up?

So that the written code does not go to the basket, we immediately drew attention to the usefulness of the feature for business and made this one of the main evaluation criteria.

In general, the list of criteria was a classic for the hackathon.
Business benefit , maximum 10 points. How interesting is the feature to business and has the right to live in production. To evaluate the projects from this point of view, we called on the jury Eugene Shirinkin, product manager at OZON.

Voting teams , a maximum of 10 points (you can’t vote for yourself, of course). Everything is simple here - whose work was liked, they voted for those.

Design and usability , maximum 3 points (great if it works out beautifully and usably, but still we are talking about development). Therefore, our projects were evaluated by Natalia Sprogis, Head of Client Experience.

Presentation, maximum 5 points.

As a result, KOTIGI scored the most points. And again about what they did: new functionality for the list of selected products with the ability to group, share favorites, and also categorize. I hope this feature will soon go to prod.

The guys won a certificate for 100,000 rubles.



5. RESULTS

Four satisfied teams (one especially satisfied), several ideas, and the code we will use. Some features were pleasant to business, and will appear in our application soon.

In short, see:


Of course, there were some difficulties: we invented a competition on the go, did not think out a rating system (the maximum score that a team could get from the jury was 15, and from other teams - 10, and now it turns out that the jury does not make a final decision). Do not repeat our mistakes - it is better to separate the jury prize and the audience’s prize.

What was right: to invite to the jury those who make product decisions - some features liked the business, and will soon appear in our application.

And now a checklist for those who decide to organize their first hackathon.

• Decide on a goal . Team building and relaxation cannot be an end in itself. If you ask people to do something, they must understand why this is and what will happen to the results of their work further. Close technical debt? Saw new features? Catch bugs?
• Schedule the timing . Do you have hardcore or light? How much time do you spend on development? How many at the presentation? For example, we decided to move the search for ideas beyond the hackathon itself - thanks to this, the guys managed to rest (and get enough sleep and work the next day).
• Decide who to call on the team . For example, the evaluation criteria will depend on this - we did not call designers into teams, therefore it was impossible to win due to the beauty of the interface.
• Prizes should be impressive. Of course, you can gamble and fight for a chocolate bar - but finding fighters will be more difficult.
• Projects should be evaluated by professionals. If developers can appreciate the beauty of the code, then asking them to comment on the importance of functionality for business is strange. But the jury must be authoritative.
• Think interactive. It is always good when, in addition to the main activity, in the process (and the hackathon is also a very long process), guys can participate in short activities. This helps the teams aerate their brains, and the organizers - to give out more prizes for memory. We did not think about it, so on the go we came up with a quiz, bought prizes and played. It was nice.
• Harvest the merch. Mugs, T-shirts, stickers, sweatshirts - it is important to balance the idea with the logo / brand / company name. The merch must be cool, otherwise it will immediately become garbage.

And do not forget the photos, of course! Our can be found here