The first-ever bug bash I attended was in 2016, my first year into the corporate world. This event was an internal event organized within our project team, just before a major release.
Cut the frame to 2021, when the whole world was wrapped in uncertainty, ruled by COVID and remote working was the new norm, I fortunately got introduced to the real testing world and took my career as a serious choice.
I attended my life’s first hackathon as a participant in Dec 2021 – Zenquest hosted by The Test Tribe. I gave it my all, slept for just 4hrs and learnt a lot about testing, competition, tools, time-boxed sessions, maximizing productivity, decision-making, and the list goes on.
More than the winning, the learnings mattered.
In 2022, with the experience of attending these events, I was given the opportunity to host an event at my workplace. Since then, I have hosted two successful editions and I will be hosting the third edition this upcoming weekend.
With my experience of conducting these hackathon/bug bash events at the org level, I want to share with you all, a few tips to organize successful bug bash events.
- Prepare for the Event: So it all starts with the planning phase for the event. In this phase, prepare a clear agenda of the event, with defined objectives and goals that we want to accomplish, the event schedule and timelines, Rewards and overall budget for the event, identify the Jury panelists and evaluation criteria, etc. Draft an event proposal including all these details and seek necessary approvals.
- Inviting Participants: Once you have the necessary approvals and the schedule and agenda are decided, it’s time to send communication across and gather participants. Collaborate with the marketing teams and HR for event promotions and send out a registration form/link for participants to register for the event. Communicate the schedule, tools, and platform for the event. Beware not to disclose everything! Keep it exciting and prepare them for a surprise on the day of the event 🙂
- Running the Event: On the day of the event, start by welcoming & thanking the attendees followed by a debriefing of the event format, objectives, guidelines & evaluation criteria. Next is the big reveal – the Product and its demo. Post this, the clock starts ticking for the participants. Share the submission form/template and communicate the guidelines & timelines. Motivate and engage the participants through communication channels and leaderboards. As the clock strikes the end time, freeze all submissions and thank the participants for their participation and relentless effort.
- Post the Event: After the event, sort the submissions and send them to the Jury for evaluation. Post their evaluation, and announce the Winners for the event. Share the bugs/bug reports with the Product owner/team. Gather the event feedback from the participants and thank everyone for contributing to the success of the event.
This is how I have been planning the Bug Bashes at my workplace. Each event brought in some learnings that I incorporated to organize the next one. It took me a while to build a structure on how to organize these events. I’m documenting these tips for a future someone like me, who wants to host such events in a structured and organized way.
Let me know how you organize such events. What do you do differently?
Leave a 🙂 if these tips were helpful to you.
Thanks for reading 🙂
🙂