How Devpost for Teams streamlines hackathon judging

Let’s talk about the most nerve-wracking part of running an internal hackathon—the judging process. It’s where everything needs to go perfectly. After all, this is often the only part of your event that senior leaders are closely involved in.

Why is judging so important?

Your judges are most likely executives and senior leaders who have carved time out of their packed schedules to participate. They need a seamless experience that respects their time and makes it easy for them to evaluate projects thoughtfully. Anything less can cast a shadow over the entire hackathon.

Not to mention that your participants have put a lot of time and effort into their projects! Ensuring the judging process runs smoothly means that every project can be fairly evaluated.

So, let’s take a look at all the ways Devpost for Teams takes the stress out of hackathon judging.

Looking for step-by-step instructions on setting up judging in Devpost for Teams? Check out our Help article.

A hackathon judging platform that won’t let you down

Devpost for Teams streamlines hackathon judging with:

• An intuitive interface that requires no technical training or learning curve for judges
• A reliable, secure platform with projects and scoring all in one place
• Automatic progress tracking so you know exactly which judges might need a gentle reminder
• Built-in scoring so there’s no need to manually calculate scores (and risk embarrassing calculation errors)
• The ability for judges to save their progress as they go, so they don’t have to commit to assessing all projects at once

Take a deep dive into 10 Devpost for Teams features that help internal hackathon organizers save time, increase participation, and showcase results.

Everything lives in one place

Gone are the days of juggling spreadsheets and email chains. Judges get a clear, intuitive interface where they can:

• See all their assigned projects in one place
• Score each project on a scale of 1-5
• Leave comments on projects as they go
• Track exactly how many projects they have left to review

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Easily customizable judging process

Every hackathon is different, and we get that. To customize the judging experience to work for your hackathon, you can:

• Create judging groups: This makes it easy to organize projects by group, such as by hackathon track, team structure, or any other way you’d like to organize projects.
• Assign specific judges to each group: This ensures that judges only review projects assigned to their group.
• Easily conduct multiple judging rounds: You have the option to run multiple rounds of evaluations before selecting winners.
• Set up to six criteria for judges to evaluate projects on: Judges can score projects from 1-5 for each criterion.

Empowers judges to provide meaningful feedback

The chance to showcase projects to senior leaders is a huge motivator for many hackathon participants. Devpost for Teams makes it easy for busy judges to leave detailed feedback on the projects they’re evaluating.

As an organizer, you can choose if you want to share the following feedback with participants:

• Round score
• Individual judge feedback
• Anonymous feedback

If you’ve selected to share feedback with participants, it will be automatically shared with project teams after each judging round. As well, participants will only see feedback for their projects.

Keep tabs on the entire judging process

The judging phase is a critical moment where organizers face a paradox: it's the most important part of your hackathon, yet it's also when you have the least direct control, as evaluation shifts into the hands of busy senior leaders and judges.

Here’s how Devpost for Teams helps organizers stay in control:

• Track judging progress so you know exactly which judges might need a friendly reminder
• Monitor judges’ scores and comments to gain early insights into the hackathon results
• You decide when to end each judging round

Selecting winners is a breeze with automatic results tallying

Devpost for Teams does all the heavy lifting by automatically averaging the judges’ scores and making it easy to select winners. After judging is over and you’re ready to select winners, you can:

• See all projects ranked by score
• Select a winning project for each award
• Choose to announce winners right away or save your choices to announce later

Once winners have been announced, they’ll be featured at the top of the hackathon landing page. The platform will also automatically email your hackathon’s registrants to let them know that winners were selected. 

Bonus: Enable voting to get more people involved in your hackathons

Want to give people the chance to vote for their favorite projects? In Devpost for Teams, you can create voting groups that let you decide exactly who you’d like to invite to vote and choose how they’ll see projects.

Setting voting permissions allows you the flexibility to choose who can participate:

• Public: Anyone with the voting link can access the ballot and cast a vote—no sign-in required. You can also share these links with people outside of your organization.
• Email only required: Users must enter their email address to vote, but won’t need to perform a full sign-in.
• Sign-in required: Voters must sign into Devpost for Teams to vote.

As the organizer, you can also control how projects will be ordered on the voting ballot:

• Customized: Lets you drag and drop projects into any order you’d like—ideal for those who want to show projects in the same order they were presented.
• Alphabetical: Gives you the choice to order projects by title from A-Z or Z-A.‍
• Randomized: Shows projects in a random order.

Transform internal hackathon judging

Running an effective internal hackathon takes time and careful planning. The judging phase needs to be flawless—not just for your senior leaders, but for every participant who's put their heart into creating something innovative. Devpost for Teams gives you the tools to run a professional, organized judging process that impresses leadership and ensures fair evaluation for all projects.

Ready to see how Devpost for Teams can elevate your next internal hackathon? Book a demo today to see these features in action.