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Protecting 10% time

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EvanProdromou (talkcontribs)

I think giving creative people some leeway to explore interesting new areas of technology is 💯 awesome. But we need to make sure that that time is being used to its best purpose: letting folks learn, experiment, and explore. If it becomes a dumping ground for tasks that don't otherwise fit into our schedules, it becomes less helpful for us as a group.


Here's a positive 10% time interaction where a developer is using their time to explore an issue that they find interesting:


Manager: So, it looks like we're not going to have time for task T123456 this sprint, and it's a low priority, so let's put it back in the backlog.

Developer: Actually, I think it's a really interesting problem. Do you mind if I work on it for my 10% time?

Manager: No problem, but we're not going to have it be a deliverable for this sprint.


Here's a superficially similar interaction that doesn't give the developer the agency to determine their own area of exploration:


Developer: I have too much to do this sprint period. I can't do all this.

Manager: Hmm... what if you do T123456 during your 10% time?

Developer: Well...

Manager: Didn't you say recently that this is a topic you're interested in?

Developer: Yeah... I guess.

Manager: Great. That means we can get everything done during this sprint period.


Here's a last one we should watch for:


Developer: I have too much to do this sprint period. I can't do all this.

Manager: So, I know this is asking a lot, but could you skip your 10% time this sprint, so we can make our deadline?

Developer: I skipped it during our last sprint, though.

Manager: You can catch up after this sprint. This is our big push. Think of what a cool big project you can do with all that banked 10% time!

Developer: OK, I guess.


I'm sure we can all imagine what happens to "banked" 10% time.


Anyway, I think we need to be very proactive in protecting this time.

WDoran (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Yeah, I 100% agree with this, I would wish to hope that the manager would take responsibility for not engaging in these kinds of behaviour but I'm equally sure there are a variety of eventualities that could easily lead this to happening without any deliberate attempt to over write the 10% time. Skip 1:1 should hopefully hold managers accountable but do you think we should deliberately call this out under a "Manager Responsibilities" section?


We could very simply list out the expectation of what the Manager should do and how we can all hold them accountable to that.

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