@simon_kimber just put this beautifully written post up about the difficulties in keeping his dev team motivated when much of what they do is, by definition, repetitive: building on what has gone before. What they’ve built is great but the development schedule is full and there’s no time to do the things they really want to.

Simon’s solution: a leaf out of the Google history book. Fridays you can do what you like. 

His take on this:

“Just taking the short-term view, by allowing our team to release their captive ideas into the wild, we should get some cool new features and develop some experimental stuff that may or may not work, but will be fun finding out. The broader view, however, promises so much more.

As I’ve alluded to already, the brain is a muscle that needs exercising and the opportunity to practice innovation and ideas will breed more of the same.  Not just specific ideas, but also innovative ways of thinking, can be brought from this to every project we undertake.”

The team’s take?

“Awesome. I want it to be Friday again.”

They just started it, can’t wait to see how it pans out.