Internal
hackathon
template and
planning kit
Table of contents
Introduction >
Internal hackathon template >
Resource checklist >
Sample hackathon judging rubric >
Pre-hackathon workback schedule >
Hackathon reporting framework >
About Devpost for Teams >
Introduction
Designed for forward-thinking organizations eager to foster innovation and collaboration within their
teams, this planning kit has everything you need to start setting up your hackathon. Whether you're
aiming to solve pressing business challenges, foster a culture of innovation, or boost team morale, this
document will help you navigate the hackathon planning, execution, and post-event stages.
Use these templates and resources to help structure your hackathon, prepare participants, and run a
successful competition.
Streamline and scale your hackathons even further with
Devpost for Teams (DFT), our all-in-one internal hackathon platform
You’ll save time planning and managing your hackathons with its built-in templates, participant
registration, judging features, project gallery, and reporting.
Book a demo to see it in action! Run seamless internal hackathons with DFT's all-in-one platform.
Internal hackathon template
Use this template to help plan your internal hackathons
1. Hackathon Description 💭
Give an overview of the hackathon in 2-3
sentences. Get people excited to join by
sharing key event details and highlighting
the impact their contribution will have. 2. Audience 👨👩👧👧
Provide additional context by including the
Who do you want to participate in the
strategic rationale of why you’re running
event? Give context as to who your
the hackathon.
hackathon is best suited for.
Example
Example
Generative AI tools are taking the world by
Calling all developers, product teams, coding
storm. From senior engineers to marketing
aficionados, and tech enthusiasts!
interns, these technologies are ready for
use and are quite accessible.
With the sheer power of AI, we can venture
into new possibilities that will transform our
business—will you join us?
3. What to Build ⚙️
Describe what participants will need to
Set up your entire hackathon in build. If your hackathon has multiple tracks,
just minutes on Devpost for Teams share what’s required in each track here.
Example
Ideas — In the idea track, pitch a creative
and potentially impactful use case for AI
within our company. No technical build is
required for this track so spend more time
on the explanation.
Technical — In the technical track, build a
tool, integration, or minimum viable
product for our company to use AI in a
helpful way.
Run seamless internal hackathons
4. What to Submit 📋
with DFT's all-in-one platform
Explain what needs to be included in
Centralized platform to manage your project submissions.
entire hackathon
Example
Clearly organized details so For the idea track, submit a presentation deck
participants know exactly what to build that explains what you are proposing, what
Participant registration is built in and problem it would solve, how it could work, and
takes less than a minute any other information to sell your idea. For the
technical track, submit a URL or screencasts of
your functional project.
5. Final Presentation 🌱
Share what happens after the submission
deadline. Will everyone need to present or
only the finalists?
Ex. Projects will go through the first round of
judging on June 3 to narrow it down to the top
three finalists. The finalists will be announced 6. Judging 🧑🏼⚖️
on June 4 and will have the opportunity to
present their projects in the Town Hall Meeting List who will review the project
on June 5. The judges will then select the first, submissions and how they will be
second, and third-place winners. evaluated.
7. Additional Details 💬 Streamline the process
Streamline the process for judges (and
Provide links to all applicable resources to yourself as the organizer) by using a
help participants during the hackathon. hackathon platform with built-in judging
Check out the Resources Checklist features. Talk to our team to see how
included in the Planning Kit for more much time DFT can save you in your next
examples of what to include in this section. internal hackathon.
Sample schedule for an in-person hackathon 📅
Keep participants on track by highlighting important dates and deadlines.
June 1 Hackathon kickoff DFT's built-in schedule keeps
Intro session, start forming teams,
participants engaged
and submissions open
Highlight key event dates & deadlines
Deadlines shown in local time zones
June 2 Workshop: pitch & demo tips
Learn best practices from the
to avoid confusion
Sales leads Pre-schedule communications to
remind participants about upcoming
deadlines
June 3 First round of judging
Offline submission review
June 4 Finalists announced
June 5 Finalist pitches and judging
June 5 Winners announced!
Showcase all submitted projects in the DFT Project Gallery
long after the hackathon has ended
Easily search and filter through
all submitted projects
Allows participants to keep
building on their ideas
Share the Project Gallery as
inspiration for your next
hackathon
Resource checklist
What to provide participants in your hackathon
For Inspiration 💡 Get more project submissions
☐ Examples from past hackathons with Devpost for Teams
☐ Project ideas list for inspiration
☐ Sample code
☐ Specific problems to solve (optional)
To help build and submit 🖌️
☐ Relevant datasets—either specific
datasets you’d like them to use or
public datasets
☐ Prompt engineering resources (for AI
hackathons)
☐ Instructions on how to submit project—
especially if you aren’t using a
dedicated hackathon platform
Built-in templates allow participants to
For security 🔒 spend more time building and less
time structuring their submissions
☐ Security policies and clear instructions
Registrants can easily find teammates
on using data securely (especially for
by skillset
AI hackathons)
Keep everything organized with
a centralized platform
Store all resources, hackathon details,
projects (and more!) in one place —
and share it with participants using
just one link.
Sample hackathon judging rubric
Pro Tip 💡 Choose 3 of these judging criteria to help participants focus their projects
Criteria 1 2 3 4 5 Streamline the project
evaluation process with
Devpost for Teams
Potential impact
How big of an impact could the
project have on the company?
How big of an impact could it
have beyond the company?
Quality of the idea
How creative and unique is the
project? Does the concept exist
already? If so, how much does
the project improve on it?
Is it an application that would Judging and scoring are
encourage a user to use it more built into the platform so
than once for its benefits? (if
judges can view, assess,
applicable)
and award great projects—
all in one place.
Implementation of the idea
Includes how well the participant
executed the idea.
Provide a better judging
Technological implementation experience for judges
Does the project demonstrate and organizers with DFT
quality software development?
Does the project thoroughly Criteria-style judging
leverage the required tool?
How is the quality of the code?
allows judges to score
(if applicable) projects within the
platform
Assign projects to
Design
Is the user experience and judges to help them
design of the project well stay organized
thought out? Compile scores and
Is there a balanced blend of
frontend and backend in the
award projects from
software? (if applicable) within the platform
Pre-hackathon workback schedule
This sample schedule is based on
a four-week planning schedule. To get your hackathon running as quickly as possible,
Depending on your organization, talk to our team of hackathon planning experts. They can
this process could be done much help you streamline managing the entire competition.
faster or take much longer.
Time until
launch Pre-launch tasks
4 WEEKS Familiarize yourself with the hackathon platform and test out features that will
make a successful hackathon (e.g., announcements to engage with registrants)
Kickoff with all the hackathon stakeholders
Focus on key details: your organization’s goals for the hackathon, what metrics
to track, event dates, who can participate, what themes to build around, event
location (in person, online, hybrid?), judging criteria, and prizes
Source judges early and make sure they are available during your judging dates
3 WEEKS While full legal rules are not always necessary for internal hackathons, find out
early if you need to include them
Post internal comms to get the word out about the hackathon
2 WEEKS Plan relevant engagement sessions to run during the hackathon like kickoff
webinars, team-building sessions, and technical or subject matter expert talks
Assemble resources to help participants get up to speed quickly during the
hackathon
Draft the hackathon page/event copy with graphics, schedule of events, and
key details for participants
Share the draft site for internal feedback with your hackathon stakeholders
1 WEEKS Pre-schedule communications to publish during the hackathon to remind
participants of events and due dates
Evaluate the upcoming needs after the submission deadline and during the
judging period
Create a post-hackathon survey for your participants
LAUNCH Launch 🚀
Message all of your potential participants and encourage them to register
Hackathon reporting framework:
Key metrics to track
Measure the results that truly matter
Want to spend less
Congratulations on running your internal hackathon! This framework
time creating wrap-
will help you identify the key metrics to track to accurately measure up reports?
the success of your event and show off your hard work.
Book a demo to see
how Devpost for
Fundamental metrics Teams makes it easy
to highlight the
There are a few fundamental metrics to track when assessing the impact of your
success of your hackathon. These help set the baseline for your next hackathons.
event. They are:
Number of participants + participation rate
Number of projects submitted
Compare registrants vs. number of people who submitted
projects
Number of projects submitted per category
Identify winning projects
However, while important, these metrics don’t always show the
bigger picture.
Enhanced metrics to impress your boss
Show how the
The reality is that measuring the success of your hackathon is about hackathon helped
more than the static numbers. Instead, it’s about measuring the your company
overall long-term, actionable impact this event has on your company. Save or earn
This comes down to: money
Comparing results over multiple hackathons Save time
Measuring engagement and the overall impact on your Delight
teams customers
Qualifying hackathon wins
See on next page
Compare results to accurately
gauge success
Using a benchmark to measure your Measure engagement and
results against will help you gauge the impact on teams
success of your hackathon. Include these
in your final reporting: Hackathons inspire creativity, boost
employee morale, enable cross-team
Results compared to your original goals
collaboration, and foster a culture of
Growth compared to your last similar
innovation. Include these in your final
hackathon
Registration question answers compared reporting to help measure your
to post-hackathon survey results hackathon’s impact:
Team dynamics, such as:
Asking participants to answer questions
Participants new to hackathons
while they’re registering is a great way to
Teams created with members from
get a baseline metric. You can use a multiple departments
platform like DFT to easily set this up and Participation by location
review the results. Conversion rates of participants who
became submitters
Engagement through event attendance:
How many people joined tech workshops,
team building sessions, etc.
Pro Tip 💡
Showcase winning projects to
emphasize your hackathon’s impact
Qualitative wins
Hackathon results are about more than
the numbers. Include these in your final
reporting to show the bigger picture:
Quotes from judges
Future plans for winning projects
Feedback from participants
A link to view all submitted projects after
the hackathon
👉 You never know what a project
submission could inspire. Ensuring
Store, sort, and search through all projects projects are accessible gives
in the DFT Project Gallery, where they’re participants the chance to keep
permanently documented. Book a demo to iterating and enables other employees
learn more. to learn from them too.
A better way to manage your
internal hackathons
Save time running your hackathons with Devpost for Teams—from registration and team building
to collecting and judging submissions. See how to streamline and scale your hackathons with ease.
Show hackathon details
in one place
Show participants and
potential participants exactly
what they need to build
Create a clear schedule with
key dates mapped out
Store and access all
projects in the same place
Built-in templates allow
you to set up a hackathon
in just a few clicks
Keep things organized,
streamlined, and seamless
for judges
The criteria-based rating
system makes it easy to
compile scores across
judges and projects
Contact Us
Ready to run your next great hackathon? We're here to help!
www.devpost.com Devpost for Teams (DFT) is your all-in-one solution for
[email protected] seamless internal hackathons. From registration and team
formation to submission collection and judging, DFT makes it
212.675.6164 easy to manage every step of your event in one place.
Whether you’re planning a company-wide hackathon or
scaling your existing events, Devpost for Teams simplifies the
process so you can focus on innovation, not logistics.
Let’s make your next hackathon a success—contact us today!
