ABSTRACT

Time-bounded events such as hackathons, data dives, codefests, hack-days, sprints or edit-a-thons have increasingly gained attention from practitioners and researchers. Yet there is a paucity of research on corporate hackathons, which are nearly ubiquitous and present significant organizational, cultural, and managerial challenges. To provide a comprehensive understanding of team processes and broad array of outcomes of corporate hackathons, we conducted a mixed-methods, multiple case study of five teams that participated in a large scale corporate hackathon. Two teams were “pre-existing” teams (PETs) and three were newly-formed “flash” teams (FTs). Our analysis revealed that PETs coordinated almost as if it was just another day at the office while creating innovations within the boundary of their regular work, whereas FTs adopted role-based coordination adapted to the hackathon context while creating innovations beyond the boundary of their regular work. Project sustainability depended on how much effort the team put into finding a home for their projects and whether their project was a good fit with existing products in the organization’s product portfolio. Moreover, hackathon participation had perceived positive effects on participants’ skills, careers, and social networks.

摘要

黑客马拉松、数据潜水、代码节、黑客日、冲刺或编辑马拉松等限时活动越来​​越受到从业者和研究人员的关注。然而，很少有关于企业黑客马拉松的研究，这些活动几乎无处不在，并带来了重大的组织、文化和管理挑战。为了全面了解团队流程和企业黑客马拉松的广泛成果，我们对参加大型企业黑客马拉松的五个团队进行了混合方法、多个案例研究。两支球队是“预先存在的”球队（PETs），三支是新成立的“闪电”球队（FTs）。我们的分析表明，在日常工作范围内创造创新时，PET 几乎就像在办公室的另一天一样进行协调，而 FT 采用了适应黑客马拉松环境的基于角色的协调，同时创造了超出其常规工作范围的创新。项目的可持续性取决于团队为他们的项目寻找归属地付出了多少努力，以及他们的项目是否适合组织产品组合中的现有产品。此外，黑客马拉松的参与对参与者的技能、职业和社交网络产生了积极影响。