12%-time

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 Google's 20% time concept.

Goals

12% Time creates structured slack in employees' schedules. This has two primary goals: 1. force us to create slack in project schedules, that can be consumed when time runs over. 2. allow for more experimentation and creativity that might not naturally come up in projects.

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 build 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.

Second 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

choose your own topic do this at the end of the week, once work is done preferably not in the weekend demo your work or share learnings Friday