

WOW Week at PatientsLikeMe - wpeterson
http://blog.winfieldpeterson.com/2012/01/20/wow-week-at-patientslikeme/

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pflats
I think the fact that they do a week devoted to reducing technical debt is
just as awesome as the WOW week (and giving the innovation time right after
code improvement is probably the best way to do things.)

I'd be concerned, though, that having an "innovation week" only once every 2
months might slow down whatever momentum you were building on a project. I
know I'd want to keep plugging on my 12.5% project after hours in between the
chances the company gave to work on it. Which might be exactly what they're
hoping for, I suppose.

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wpeterson
That's a valid concern. We hire motivated folks who often work on side-
projects whether they're work-related or not (a lot of open source
contributors, etc).

In our experience it's worked out well, the higher levels of energy and
passion seem to make up for the time we spend - and produce some exciting
features/products to boot.

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imperialWicket
This is a great concept, although I share a couple of the concerns mentioned
(project momentum, and the implied issues with this technique as the
organization grows).

I recently highlighted that I'd like to have a pot of opensource days that I
could use at my discretion (<http://imperialwicket.com/how-about-some-open-
source-days>). I think it offers a similar benefit, while maintaining a lot of
personal responsibility for timing and usage. That said, the structure of WOW
week has a lot of built-in benefits as well (team-building, motivation that
comes with working as a larger unit, etc.).

Nice job, PatientsLikeMe. It's good that this type of insight is being pushed
and highlighted as a productive technique both for the organization and the
employee.

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hkarthik
I've worked at a company that tried to implement these types of 'hackathon
sprints', but it always came down to last minute fires or upper management
delaying them at the last minute for arbitrary reasons.

Glad you guys are able to do it, and I hope you'll continue to do so as you
grow.

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wpeterson
We do struggle with this, too.

We rotate one person on 2-week interrupt-driven bug duty - we do have bugs we
have to address immediately, but the interruptions are constrained to one
victim. This helps protect the rest of the team.

We also struggle with bleed-over and follow-up work from a previous
development sprint when WOW Week comes right afterward. There's no silver
bullet to prevent this, though we try to be more disciplined about letting
work slip if it can't ship completely on time.

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amackera
We do this at Top Hat Monocle too, except we call them Hack weeks. We've found
it tricky to make sure they are respected, meaning it's hard not to get
distracted by critical bug fixes. We have quite a small team right now so that
might play a part in it.

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AznHisoka
How many employees does Patients Like Me have?

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wpeterson
We're a little over 40 people right now, a little less than half that in
engineering/data operations.

