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TBM Council Hackathon

Innovate. Collaborate. Transform Technology Business Management.

Join the inaugural TBM Council Hackathon to build innovative solutions that solve real-world Technology Business Management challenges using AI, analytics, automation, and the TBM Framework.

Registration is now open. Build your team, choose your challenge, and submit your solution by October 18.

Register Now

What is the Hackathon?​

The TBM Council Hackathon is a collaborative innovation competition where teams design and demonstrate practical solutions to real-world Technology Business Management challenges.

Participants will apply the TBM Framework, leverage technologies such as AI, analytics, and automation, and develop solutions that improve how organizations manage technology investments and deliver business value.

The Hackathon is vendor-neutral and platform-neutral. Participants may use the software, platforms, programming languages, AI tools, cloud providers, or other technologies they believe are best suited to their solution.

Submissions will be evaluated based on the quality of the solution, its application of TBM principles, innovation, business impact, and practicality — not the technologies or vendors used.

Finalists and winning solutions will be recognized and showcased as part of the 2026 TBM Conference in Miami.

Why Participate?​

Whether you’re a TBM practitioner, FinOps professional, IT finance leader, architect, data analyst, developer, or part of the broader TBM ecosystem, the Hackathon offers an opportunity to collaborate, innovate, and make a lasting impact on the TBM community.

By participating, you’ll help shape the future of Technology Business Management by developing innovative solutions that the TBM community can learn from, adapt, and build upon. The best ideas have the potential to inspire future best practices and practical approaches across the TBM community.

Participant Benefits:

The Hackathon is designed to give participants an opportunity to:

  • Solve real-world TBM challenges by developing practical solutions that can create value for the broader TBM community.
  • Showcase your innovation to TBM leaders, practitioners, and members of the broader TBM community.
  • Have your work evaluated by experienced TBM leaders and practitioners using established Hackathon judging criteria.
  • Connect and collaborate with peers from organizations across the TBM community.
  • Contribute to the future of TBM by developing ideas and approaches that others can learn from, adapt, and build upon.
  • Receive recognition for your work through finalist selection, conference showcases, community visibility, thought leadership opportunities, and other forms of professional recognition within the TBM community.

Hackathon Challenge Areas

Participants are encouraged to be creative in their approach and may use any technologies, platforms, programming languages, or AI tools they believe best address their chosen challenge.

Solutions should address at least one of the following challenge areas:

1) Data & Categorization

Create solutions that improve how organizations collect, classify, organize, or normalize technology and financial data for use within the TBM Framework.

Potential examples include:

  • API integrations with source systems and/or SaaS platforms
  • Intelligent data mapping and relationship discovery
  • Automated or AI-assisted categorization and taxonomy mapping
  • Data quality improvements
  • Data source standards and guidance for ITFM/TBM data (e.g., a FOCUS/FinOps-style standard for TBM)

2) Modeling & Allocation

Design solutions that improve cost modeling, allocation methodologies, forecasting, or financial planning.

Potential examples include:

  • Financial modeling and scenario planning
  • Cost allocation automation
  • Model maturity assessment and recommendations

3) Reporting & Insights

Develop dashboards, analytics, or AI-powered insights that help organizations better understand technology costs and make better business decisions.

Potential examples include:

  • Executive dashboards
  • ROI analysis
  • Cost optimization recommendations (e.g., identify an action and quantify potential savings)
  • Predictive analytics
  • Trade-off decision engines (e.g., compare options based on cost, value, and business impact)
Register Now

How to Participate

Register for the track that best fits you or your team.

Teams may include up to five participants, and each team must designate one Team Leader to serve as the primary point of contact with TBM Council.

If you’re interested in participating but don’t yet have a team, or you’re joining a team that has already registered, contact us and we’ll help you with the next steps.

All participants must complete registration and agree to the Hackathon Participant Terms.

After registering, participants will receive access to the Hackathon materials and resources needed to develop their solution.

Registration and final submissions close October 18, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

Register for the Hackathon

Submission Requirements

Ready to show what you’ve built?

Each team will submit:

  • A recorded video of up to five minutes demonstrating and explaining the solution.

  • A completed Solution Summary describing the challenge addressed, the solution developed, how the TBM Framework was applied, and the technologies used.

  • Optional supporting visuals or technical documentation, if desired.

To support impartial evaluation, materials submitted for judging should be de-identified. Do not include company names or logos, team member names, branded backgrounds, company URLs or email domains, or other unnecessary information that directly identifies your team or organization.

References to products, platforms, technologies, integrations, or implementation environments that are reasonably necessary to explain your solution are permitted.

Full submission instructions are provided to registered participants.

Eligibility & Participation

The 2026 TBM Council Hackathon features two judged participation tracks:

  • TBM Practitioner Track – For individuals and teams who use TBM in their professional roles and do not sell or provide TBM-related solutions.
  • Ecosystem Partner Track – For individuals and organizations that provide TBM-related software, services, consulting, implementation support, or other commercial offerings.

Practitioner and Ecosystem Partner submissions will be evaluated separately, with a winner recognized in each track.

Finalists from both tracks will also be eligible for the People’s Choice Award, determined by attendee voting in connection with the 2026 TBM Conference.

You may review the Participant Terms for complete eligibility requirements.

Teams

Participate individually or build a team of up to five people. Teams may include participants from the same organization or across multiple organizations.

Every team must designate one Team Leader to serve as the primary point of contact with our TBM Council staff.

Looking for teammates? Contact us and we can help connect you with other participants interested in forming a team.

Email the Hackathon Program Manager, Nick Santaniello, at nsantaniello@tbmcouncil.org.

2026 Hackathon Timeline

August 15

Pre-registration Begins

October 1

Registration Opens & Hackathon Begins

October 18

Submissions Due

October 19-30

Evaluation & Judging

November 2

Finalists Announced

November 9-11

Finalists Showcased & Winners Recognized at the 2026 TBM Conference

Hackathon Registration

Are you a TBM Practitioner or an Ecosystem Partner?

TBM Practitioner: Uses TBM in their role and does not sell or provide TBM solutions
I am a TBM Practitioner
Ecosystem Partner: Works for an organization that sells or helps clients implement TBM solutions
I am an Ecosystem Partner

Red Hat built the world’s largest enterprise open-source software company, growing into a multi-billion-dollar firm before being acquired by IBM Corp. This open-source heritage often placed the value of technology in the product and engineering realm rather than with IT. Thus, not surprisingly, Red Hat’s TBM journey started with a new CFO wanting to know why IT costs were so high. Through the TBM framework and discipline, Red Hat IT successfully delivered cost transparency of all IT spend and then became a model for technology spend planning and forecasting. The IT team added the FinOps discipline to its capabilities and is now managing a broad hybrid cloud portfolio. However, TBM and FinOps have remained in the realm of IT only, until now. Red Hat’s current CIO, Jim Palermo, is driving TBM, FinOps, and Enterprise Agile Management across the company based on IT’s success and through the lens of value stream management. in this session, Jim will walk through Red Hat’s TBM journey and its current transformation to an operational business architecture framework built on value streams aligned to business outcomes.

Speaker:

  • Jim Palermo, VP, CIO, Red Hat

When the team at Tenet Healthcare made the decision to move towards a model that provided more accurate financial transparency, they looked to TBM practices and solutions. Join Paola Arbour, EVP and CIO at Tenet healthcare as she answers the question “why TBM?”, including what Tenet was trying to solve with the TBM Taxonomy, the effectiveness of their KPIs, and how building support and momentum across the entire company was critical to their successful TBM adoption. In this session, Paola will also share how Tenet continues to evolve their use of TBM, including for mergers, acquisitions, and divestiture activity, as well as segmenting cost structures.

Speaker:

  • Paola Arbour, EVP & CIO, Tenet Healthcare

Data driven decision making has been a key to longevity and delivering best in class service to State Farm’s customers over the past 100 years. Recently, State Farm decided to use a managed services company for the day-to-day support of their Infrastructure Services. Today’s technology leaders need to be able to make real-time, informed decisions to help ensure technology investments are meeting their customer’s needs, while continuing to support company long-term goals. Ashley Pettit, SVP & CIO at State Farm, will be joined by Randy McBeath, Enterprise Technology Executive, and Andy Moore, Technology Director, and together they will share how TBM aided in State Farm’s analysis and decision to move to a managed service provider.

Speakers:

  • Ashley Pettit, SVP & CIO, State Farm Insurance
  • Andy Moore, Technology Director, State Farm Insurance
  • Randy McBeath, Enterprise Technology Executive, State Farm Insurance

There is fast evolution occurring in the overall technology spend and value management market, with the advancements of cloud, Kubernetes, AI/ML, and other innovations. At the same time, we are seeing vast changes in the roles of the CIO, CFO, and business/digital leadership. In addition, TBM is intersecting with other disciplines and frameworks, such as Cloud FinOps, Agile engineering, and portfolio resource management. How is this affecting the TBM discipline, the TBM Council, and Apptio? For one, TBM is moving down market, becoming more accessible to all sizes and maturity of organizations, with easier ways to get started and a faster time to value. Cloud FinOps, meanwhile, is advancing and adding capabilities previously in TBM to the cloud cost management space. Join Apptio CEO Sunny Gupta as he explores the evolving TBM landscape and how he believes it will bring even greater opportunity and value to organizations worldwide.

Speaker:

  • Sunny Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Apptio

In today’s challenging economic times it is critical that CFOs, CIOs, and CTOs speak the same language when it comes to the value of technology spend. Having a single source of truth that everyone can feel confident in, track progress continuously throughout the year with shared insights, and analyzing options for resourcing and funding in order to reduce waste is where TBM deepens their partnership. In this discussion, join members of the TBM Council Board of Directors as they discuss the pivotal conversations and steps taken to collectively adopt TBM practices across the organization, including responding to naysayers and gaining allies.

Panelists:

  • George Maddaloni, EVP, CTO, Operations, Mastercard
  • Laura Walsh, CIO, Smithfield Foods
  • RJ Hazra, SVP & CFO, Technology & Security, Equifax
  • Moderated by Chad Doiran, Managing Director, Tech. Strategy & Advisory, Accenture

Fumbi Chima has led technology teams across multiple organizations throughout her esteemed career, including retail, manufacturing, media, and financial services. As a turnaround and high growth leader, Fumbi has leveraged TBM as a foundational practice to bring repeatable processes, purchasing guidelines, and cost/resource savings. Now at Boeing Employe Credit Union (BECU) serving more than 1.2 million members, Fumbi is driving their digital transformation with a clear vision and strategy to optimize their public-cloud with TBM and Cloud-FinOps, adopt a product model, and set the groundwork for future innovation and growth. Join Fumbi and Larry Blasko, President, Field Operations at Apptio, as they discuss the lessons Fumbi has learned along her TBM journey, and where this transformation leader sees the evolution of TBM taking the Technology industry.

Speakers:

  • Fumbi Chima, Chief Technology & Transformation Officer, BECU
  • Larry Blasko, President, Field Operations, Apptio

Technology leaders have a unique opportunity to transform their organizations into environmental champions with sustainable business practices. In this session, Neal Ramasamy, CIO at Cognizant and Phil Alfano, Field CTO at Apptio will share how TBM can be leveraged to achieve comprehensive visibility into real-time data-driven tracking to ensure company goals and actions are being met to achieve a sustainable future.

Speakers:

  • Neal Ramasamy, CIO, Cognizant
  • Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio

For McGraw Hill, having a transparent framework that drives smart investment strategies and a common language across this 135-year-old company is critical. Known as one of the “big three” education publishers, McGraw Hill must stay ahead of their competitors with innovation and value delivery. Join Yuliya Oberman, Finance Director for McGraw Hill Education and Eileen Wade, General Manager of the TBM Council as they discuss how TBM is essential to McGraw Hill’s enterprise resource strategies and digital transformation journey.

Speakers:

  • Yuliya Oberman, Finance Director, McGraw Hill Education
  • Eileen Wade, General Manager, TBM Council

In this fireside chat, Matt Yanchyshyn, GM, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineer at AWS will join incoming General Manager of the TBM Council, Jack Bischof, for a discussion on best practices for building successful TBM practices focused on cloud financial management. Including a deep dive into the nuances, learnings, and milestones that the world’s 9th largest insurance company is achieving on their Cloud FinOps journey.

Speakers:

  • Matt Yanchyshyn, GM, AWS Marketplace & Partner Engineering, AWS
  • Jack Bischof, Incoming General Manager, TBM Council

Hear from Ajay Patel, COO at Apptio and Zubin Irani, CEO at Cprime as they discuss how the intersection of TBM and enterprise agile planning is a critical strategy for organizations to adopt if they want to drive business growth more efficiently, in real-time, and keep up with the speed of change that today’s organizations face.

Speakers:

  • Ajay Patel, COO, Apptio
  • Zubin Irani, CEO, Cprime

Join Origin Energy’s Adrian Thivy, GM, Enterprise Technology Services, as he shares how TBM is creating complete confidence in their spend-to-value ratios across IT and the broader company, allowing a rapid response to the market forces driving significant pressure on the “cost to serve” customers. A finalist for the 2022 TBM Council Award for TBM Pacesetter, hear how their TBM practice was built in record time, including lessons learned as they developed business capabilities and managed a significant cloud migration and transformation.  

Session topics will include:  

  • Establishing a clear purpose and common goals that drive cross-functional understanding
  • Utilizing an adaptative governance framework to ensure accountability across all stakeholders 
  • Leveraging TBM and ServiceNow CSDM to deliver a transparent, flexible, and sustainable model in a shorter time frame
  • How bespoke logic has dramatically improved transparency of cost more than 90%


Presented by:

  • Adrian Thivy, GM, Enterprise Technology Services, Origin Energy 

Many organizations aspire for a cloud-native posture, however few have the time, resources and budget to transform into 100% public cloud operations. Equifax has broken through those barriers to modernize its infrastructure globally — driving faster innovation for customers, more business agility, and stronger cybersecurity. Hear from Manav Doshi, GM, Technology Solutions on how the Equifax team is rebuilding a century-old company, with a real-time approach to optimizing cost and revenue growth in the cloud.

 

Presented by:

  • Manav Doshi, GM, Technology Solutions, Equifax 

Transport for NSW is the winner of the 2022 TBM Council Award for TBM Pacesetter, which recognizes significant progress and value with TBM in a relatively short period of time. In this session, hear how the merger of Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and Transport for New South Wales resulted in the fastest consolidation of TBM data, models, and reports into a single TBM practice. Hear from Poonam Kataria, Sr. Manager of TBM, as she shares how TBM is driving Transport’s three key strategic outcomes: connecting a customer’s whole life; successful places for communities; and enabling economic activity.

Session topics will include: 

  • Utilizing the TBM Taxonomy to align M&A practices and drive behavioural change 
  • How the right level of support sets the right culture and TBM processes
  • Driving change in the organization based on data-driven facts

Presented by: 

  • Poonam Kataria, Sr. Manager, TBM, Transport for NSW 

Discuss how TBM supports visibility of investments across the enterprise to support setting best practices and standards for managing the impact of environmental, societal, and governance strategies by IT departments and organizations.

The TBM Council Standards Committee has built out TBM integration models with other IT disciplines, including Enterprise Agile and Product Thinking, as well as ServiceNow CSDM. Current findings will be shared to drive group discussion, experience, and feedback. 

Public cloud strategies are often embraced for the promise of rapid scalability, on-demand agility, and best-in-class security, resiliency, and features. However, public cloud adoption presents significant financial challenges that, when not addressed, inhibit any firm’s ability to exploit the promises of public cloud.  

To address these challenges, customers need to simultaneously resolve current inefficiencies and build capability to ensure avoidance of waste in the long term.  

In this session we discuss a detailed framework combining TBM-Cloud with FinOps, allowing customers to understand how to implement a program to overcome these challenges and financially succeed in the cloud. 

Session discussion topics include: 

  • A detailed view of the activities required to implement a TBM-Cloud with FinOps Journey 
  • Detail the flow of information required for each task 
  • Provide guidance on which activities should be performed when

 

Presented by:

  • Nathan Besh, TBM-Cloud Evangelist, TBM Council 

Project to Product Transition

Outcome-focused development via agile transformation

For organizations looking to transition from projects to products, TBM can help organize resources and outcomes into value streams – the specific sets of activities that align to business outcomes.

Accelerating Cloud Adoption

Drive measurable outcomes with your cloud strategy

For organizations trying to accelerate their cloud journey, TBM provides a way to map a plan and measure the outcomes from cloud migration to cloud cost management to cloud optimization.

Morning Sessions

A look back at 10 years of TBM leadership and community building.

Speaker:

  • Ashley Pettit, SVP & CIO, State Farm Insurance

Introduced more than 10 years ago, Technology Business Management (TBM) was born out of the need for CIOs to have a management system to drive their technology operating strategy. At its core, the TBM discipline gives visibility into technology spend to provide common ground and enable a collaborative partnership across teams for prioritizing resources and achieving business outcomes. In this session, the TBM Council Standards Committee Chair, Atticus Tyson will share how over the past few years TBM has evolved to ensure leaders are able to accelerate digital initiatives, embrace the cloud, and communicate today’s complex technology landscape. TBM enables organizations to frequently and quickly evaluate projects, platforms, and investments to address the needs of the modern enterprise.

Speaker:

  • Atticus Tysen, SVP Product Development, Chief Information Security & Fraud Prevention Officer, Intuit

Atticus Tyson and Phil Alfano will guide the group through an executive discussion to capture “What is digital success to you?”. Is it how your organization creates new business capabilities? The elimination of legacy processes and systems? Funding innovation? Or all of the above as long as it drives an improved customer experience? Discuss with your table mates, as an overall group, and capture learnings and takeaways to bring back to your own team.

Speakers:

  • Atticus Tyson, SVP Product Development, Chief Information Security & Fraud Prevention Officer, Intuit
  • Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio

How does a 170-year-old financial institution deliver a new, fully modernized technology strategy while supporting 24×7 service to their customers across a multitude of platforms, including point-of-sale, mobile, and web services? Mike Brady, Nicole Holmes, and Chad Schmidt will share how at Wells Fargo, they are creating a Technology Infrastructure team founded in the TBM discipline and responsible for aligning with internal partners to adopt an automation first approach for accelerating the delivery of services and deploying enhancements at speed. All while remaining compliant, secure, and agile.

Speakers:

  • Mike Brady, EVP, Technology Infrastructure, Wells Fargo
  • Nicole Holmes, EVP, CFO for Technology, Wells Fargo
  • Chad Schmidt, SVP, Technology Finance Modernization, Wells Fargo

It’s been two years since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic. To re-imagine employee and customer experiences, every company was forced to speed up their shift to digital from multi-year project plans to instead creating, executing, and delivering new business models in a matter of weeks. As we emerge from this crisis, we recognize this shift is not slowing down but exponentially increasing as businesses continue to respond to societal expectations of anytime, anywhere. In this session, Sunny Gupta will share how the companies best positioned to quickly respond to changing market conditions and hyper competition have a holistic view of their technology spend so they can be agile in their investment decisions, use the cloud as a competitive advantage, and align their resources to product delivery models and continuously measure value.

Speaker:

  • Sunny Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, Apptio

Afternoon Sessions

Spinning up a cloud-native posture is a desired strategy for many organizations, however few have the time, resources, and budget to achieve 100% public cloud operations. In 2018, Equifax set a 5-year goal to achieve this, striving to provide their customers with faster innovation, more flexible business agility, and stronger cybersecurity. Hear from RJ Hazra, SVP & CFO, Technology on the lessons and successes the Equifax team has found along their journey, and what remains as they cross into their final year of their company-wide digital transformation.

Speaker:

  • RJ Hazra, SVP & CFO, Technology & Security, Equifax

The cloud is a significant shift in computing and companies need to get maximum value from it. FinOps is the evolving cloud financial management practice that empowers organizations to track and maximize cloud spend and enable tech, finance, and business teams to collaborate on data-driven spending decisions. In this talk, J.R. Storment, Executive Director of the FinOps Foundation will explore the intersection between TBM and the FinOps practice and the benefits achieved. Session discussion topics include: 

  • Creating a culture of ownership over cloud usage and spend
  • The most important challenges to tackle for delivering products faster while gaining financial control and predictability
  • FinOps organization structures in large and small organizations from the State of FinOps 2022 report

 

Speaker:

    • J.R. Storment, Executive Director, FinOps Foundation

In this engaging conversation, executive leaders will share both the challenges and best practices realized on their journey to embrace product-based innovation.

Session discussion topics include:

  • Achieving results as you shift from a projects-to-products innovation model
  • Maximizing CIO/CFO partnerships in this new paradigm
  • Building your innovation strategy around value streams, stable teams, and a high degree of customer centricity

Speakers:

  • John Wilson, VP, IT Costing & Performance Management, MetLife
  • Kaarina Bourquin, Director, Strategy & Portfolio Operations & Technology, The Standard
  • Moderated by Toyan Espeut, Chief Customer Officer, Apptio

Session abstract coming soon

Speakers:

    • Brendan Kinkade, VP, Build ISV, Technology & Hybrid Cloud, IBM
    • Moderated by Phil Alfano, Field CTO, Apptio Foundation

TBM empowers hundreds of decision makers with the facts they need to execute a digital strategy faster, without bias, and in alignment across business units. This includes technology consumers, service and application owners, LOB CIOs, enterprise PMOs, compliance leaders, budget coordinators, and many more. What are the fundamentals of developing and executing a successful TBM practice? In this session, experienced practitioners will share the lessons and foundations they’ve learned delivering business value for their organizations with TBM.

Session discussion topics include:

  • Fundamentals of proper support and sponsorship across key stakeholders
  • Demonstrating how and why TBM is core to strategy and a digital operating model
  • Developing, educating, and enabling your core team
  • Implementing or enhancing the necessary TBM processes

Speakers:

    • Jeri Koester, CIO, Marshfield Clinic Health System
    • Latrise Brissett, Managing Director, Global IT, Accenture
    • Leslie Scott, VP & CIO, IT Enterprise Services, Stanley Black & Decker
    • Moderated by Jason Byrd, Managing Director, Technology Strategy & Advisory, Accenture