Skip to Content
INSPIRED, 2nd Edition
book

INSPIRED, 2nd Edition

by Marty Cagan
December 2017
Beginner
368 pages
6h 20m
English
Wiley
Audiobook available
Content preview from INSPIRED, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 44Hack Days

There are many variations of hack days, but in this chapter, I describe one of my favorite techniques to quickly get a range of high‐potential ideas that are focused on solving a pressing business or customer problem.

The two main types of hack days are directed and undirected. In an undirected hack day, people can explore whatever product ideas they like, so long as it's at least loosely related to the mission of the company.

In a directed hack day, there's a customer problem (for example, something is really difficult to learn and use, or it takes too long to do) or business objective we've been assigned (for example, “Reduce the customer churn rate” or “Increase customer lifetime value”), and we ask people from the product teams to self‐organize and work on any ideas they like that might address this objective.

The goal is for the self‐organizing groups to explore their ideas and create some form of prototype that can be evaluated, and if appropriate, tested on actual users.

There are two major benefits to these directed hack days. The first is practical, as the technique facilitates the inclusion of engineers at ideation. I've mentioned several times in this book that many of the best ideas come from the engineers on the team, and we need to ensure this is happening. It should be happening on an ongoing basis, but this technique will ensure it happens. ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

INSPIRED

INSPIRED

Marty Cagan
Storytelling with You

Storytelling with You

Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781119387503