We recently held our Summer Hackday at Tumblr and the results were impressive. I started to think about the mentality of a Hackday and how it differs from a more traditional product feature workflow.

It’s amazing what can be accomplished in a day.

Individuals or small groups start planning their projects in the days leading up to the event. On the day of the event, they’re off and running. They have 24 hours to get something working and demo it to the rest of the company.

Dead-end technical approaches are quickly discarded for alternatives, usually something more simple — the clock is ticking. There is no time for complexity or grand schemes. Get the basics working so you can impress your coworkers.

After the demo presentations, there is always discussion about “how close this project is to shipping?” or “what’s left to do before we could release this project?” or some other notion that we could productize certain projects after a little clean-up work.

Productize — The death knell of the Hackday project. But why? I think it’s scope creep. Scope of the purpose, but also scope of the code.

The constraint of limited time is a gift, forcing or removing decisions which create a better environment for completing the project. Hackday projects are often more aligned with the core purpose of the product as well.

• Focus on a singular purpose — try to be good at one thing.
• No time or space for complexity — you can’t build whole new architectures.
• Built on existing frameworks, patterns, and primitives — it fits into the existing product structure.

The Hackday mentality seems like a better process for building better products. It reminds me of the “fixed time, variable scope” principle from Basecamp’s Shape Up, a book describing their product process. They use six week time-boxes for any project.

Constraints limit our options without requiring us to do any of the cognitive work. With fewer decisions involved when we’re constrained, we’re less prone to decision fatigue. Constraints can actually speed up development.

Ship faster.