12%-time: Difference between revisions

'''12% Time''' is an innovation program wherein employees dedicate approximately 12% of their work week (typically four hours out of a 32-hour workweek) to pursue projects of personal interest that could potentially benefit the company. This concept is adapted from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_project_time Google's 20% time concept].  

12% Time creates structured slack in employees' schedules. This has two primary goals:  

Slack in projects is important. A fully utilized project (or team) is virtually guaranteed to fail to meet its deadlines: any small delay during a project would cause you to violate the deadline. One of the ways we ensure slack is included in our workweek, is by booking ''up to 4 hours'' every week of 12% time. Yes, that's actually 12,5% of your 32-hour workweek, but the shorter name has stuck.  

Secondly, 12% time allows for experimentation and learning outside our regular projects. The availability of work shapes projects. It might benefit Delft Solutions to have you know React, but a React-based project might not come up for months. 12% time allows for learning React on your terms. Or we might want a new plugin to calculate vacation hours in Kimai, but can't create a project for that. You could build it in 12% time. 12% time allows for exploration of new ideas, innovation outside of your daily responsibilities, skill development, and potential development of new products or features.  

== Doing 12% time at Delft Solutions ==

## What you work on, should be "work-related". We take an expansive view of that requirement; it doesn't have to be directly related to your job. Learning a new programming language, trying some new technology, building a badge reader for the office door, learning bookkeeping or accounting, making a meeting timer, etc. are all great examples of using 12% time. On the contrary, underwater basket weaving, sleeping and remodelling your bathroom are not.  

# How to budget time:

## Limit your 12% time to 4 hours per week over a long term average. It's okay to spend more or less time on 12% time per week, it doesn't have to be exactly 4 hours.  

## Try to stick closely to four hours per week though; having you do 0-0-0-16 hours in a month would defeat goal 1 of having slack every week.  

## Do not catch-up on 'missed' 12% time. If a week was quite busy, the work consumes the 12% time as a buffer, as it was intended. The next week, just do 4 hours rather than 8 hours on 12% time.

## If you miss 12% time multiple weeks in a row, especially when you do so as the whole team, bring it up as a topic for the weekly retrospective. It's an early sign that we might be overbooked w.r.t. capacity.

## Missing work objectives or deadlines while still working 12% time in a particular week is a major cause for concern and should never happen. The 12% time is a buffer, not a dedicated project.  

## Spend your 12% time towards the end of the workweek, probably Thursday or Friday, as it becomes clear that work objectives will be delivered on time for this week.  

## Do not spend 12% time on weekends to catch up on your hours for the week. Weekends should -- practically and legally -- be for rest, while 12% time is still considered work.  

## Every week on Friday in the weekly retrospective, we have an agenda item for showing the results of our 12% time.  

## Prepare beforehand to discuss your 12% time in the past week. In about 3-4 minutes, you should share:  

### any learnings you had. Don't assume that everyone already knows what you've learned: often that's not the case!

### You can talk about your process of going about it, but the main focus should be on results.