Official Competition Guidelines

Official Guidelines: Rules Demystified 💡

👥 Eligibility & Team Structure

✅ Team Size Limit

Official Rule: Teams must consist of a minimum of 3 members and a maximum of 5 members. The roster cannot change after the Kick-off Meeting.

Clarity for Participants:

You can't enter alone, and your team can't be bigger than five people. Once the competition officially starts (at the Kick-off event), your team members are locked in. Choose your teammates wisely!

✅ Participant Status

Official Rule: All participants must be current employees or verified interns. External consultants are not eligible to compete.

Clarity for Participants:

This is an internal competition. Only people currently working for the company (including official interns) can join. People hired temporarily or outside contractors cannot participate.

✅ Mentor Role

Official Rule: The assigned Company Mentor is for guidance only and cannot contribute code or be listed as a team member.

Clarity for Participants:

Your mentor is there to give you advice and help you stay on track. They are not allowed to write code or do the actual work for your team.

💾 Project & Code Submission

✅ Novelty Requirement

Official Rule: Projects must be developed entirely during the official competition period. Pre-existing code bases are strictly prohibited.

Clarity for Participants:

You must start from scratch. You cannot take an old project or code you wrote last year and submit it. Everything must be new work created specifically for this hackathon.

✅ Source Code Ownership

Official Rule: All code developed during the competition becomes the exclusive property of the company upon submission.

Clarity for Participants:

The company owns the code your team creates. Even if you don't win, the company can use or develop your idea further. This is standard practice for internal competitions.

✅ Final Deliverables

Official Rule: Teams must turn in: 1) A fully accessible GitHub repository (the code), 2) The final working demo video, and 3) Brief documentation.

Clarity for Participants:

You must turn in three specific things: your complete, clean code; a video showing your working project; and a simple document explaining how to run the project.

✅ API Usage

Official Rule: Only company-approved APIs and datasets provided at the Kick-off Meeting may be used. Unauthorized data sources will result in immediate disqualification.

Clarity for Participants:

Use only the data and tools the company gives you. Do not use unauthorized external data sources or internal systems you haven't been approved to access.

⚖️ Judging & Disqualification

✅ Criteria

Official Rule: Projects will be judged on Impact (40%), Technical Implementation (30%), and Presentation/Usability (30%).

Clarity for Participants:

The judges prioritize business value: Impact (value to the company) is the most important factor (40%). Technical Quality and Presentation make up the remaining 60%.

✅ Disqualification

Official Rule: Any attempts at plagiarism, code sharing between non-teammates, or violation of the company's Code of Conduct will result in immediate and permanent disqualification.

Clarity for Participants:

If you cheat, share code with other competing teams, or break any standard company rules, your team will be kicked out immediately.

✅ Tie-breaker

Official Rule: In the event of a tie in final scores, the Project Impact score will serve as the tie-breaker.

Clarity for Participants:

If two teams have the same overall score, the team that scored highest on Impact (value to the company) will win.

🛑 Disqualification Warning:

Failure to comply with any of these rules, particularly those concerning **Novelty**, **Code Sharing**, or **API Usage**, may lead to immediate disqualification and forfeiture of any prize or recognition.

Hackathon Footer