Funny you should ask about this when me and 4 others are having a hackathon this weekend. The plan for us so far is to use fri/sat/sun and spend aprox.. 5/10-1

Funny you should ask about this when me and 4 others are having a hackathon this weekend. The plan for us so far is to use fri/sat/sun and spend aprox.. 5/10-15/5 for a total of about 20 hours * 5 = 100. Normally you'd probably opt for longer stretches but I want to ensure we aren't tired when monday comes. Pair programming: Yes, if it feels right - but I'd rather call it group programming, utilizing everyone. Sit everyone in the same room, face to face and side by side. A ring is perfect. Have a whiteboard and papers in the room. -- Time plan Friday: Set up initial plan - what to build Describe initial functionality and spend a bit of time to make a few use cases Discuss and lay out impediments Create something like tasks for what needs to be done Hack, hack, hack till a first iteration Replan after first iteration that solves something - change the path? Saturday will be all about iterating. If someone feels to brainstorm something, do this right away unless someone is in the zone. Try to include every one in every discussion and keep it under 10 minutes. Decide and try fast. By the end of saturday we should have something working thats about where we want to be. Sunday will hopefully be for adding sugar coating and the features we thought of during our sleep. Maybe refactor. Final touches. At the end do a summary, get input on how we felt the hackathon went, what have we learned etc. Launch it and blog it. -- Time splitting We have a dedicated designer, some dedicated backend devs and some frontend so not everyone knows the same stuff - task delegation becomes logical and we dont have to split that much between these tasks. Focus on function. Design on a non completed function is worthless. A completed function without a design is not (default browser styling) Focus on value. Regarding breaks I think I will try to take break whenever I'm NOT in the zone. For a hackathon your basically not producing unless your in the zone, you wanna be in the zone every minute you sit in front of the monitor.