Agile and hackathons: a case study of emergent practices at the FNB codefest

Hackathons and similar innovation contests can accelerate the development of software prototypes to help large corporates such as banks experiment with new technology. These companies may also be adopting Agile in their existing software development practices and it is worth exploring the usage of Agile principles at such events and whether hackathons can assist overall Agile adoption. FNB is one of the largest and most innovative banks in South Africa and runs an internal hackathon called Codefest to enhance IT innovation in product design and internal operations. The event attracts over 200 internal developers who compete in teams during a 48-hour coding marathon. South African banks, including FNB, are also adopting Agile practices to improve speed and quality in their software development lifecycle. Codefest was not intended to help drive FNB's Agile journey, however some of its principles and practices were observed as having naturally occurred during the event. This article explores the emergence of Agile practices at FNB Codefest as observed during publicly broadcast interviews with various participants and stakeholders. The spoken words of the interviewees were analysed for dominant concepts using the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto as a coding framework. The interviews provided practical observations of the environment at Codefest which was found to encourage certain Agile principles and practices. Adoption of Agile by teams also correlated with their level of success in the Codefest competition however more research would be needed to determine whether Codefest accelerated the bank's overall Agile journey. Three main Agile concepts were found to be naturally cultivated by the environment of Codefest; collaboration, motivation and elements of technical excellence. Collaboration was observed between IT teams, between business and IT teams and between business teams, while also creating a model of conditions for how teams could operate during business as usual. Intrinsic motivators such as autonomy, mastery and purpose were also observed at codefest, supporting the notion of knowledge worker motivation as being crucial in setting up successful software development teams. Elements of technical excellence correlated to Agile through methodologies such as Extreme Programming or Scrum while quality practices were enabled by team practices such as communication and planning. Codefest was also mapped to a proposed model of Agile environments while considerations for such contests and suggestions for next steps are also presented. These include (1) using Codefest to raise awareness of Agile, (2) understanding how extrinsic motivators affect Codefest and Agile, (3) using Codefest participants to share and drive technical excellence and (4) Agile training before Codefest.