ShipIt fit into the broader context of innovation at Atlassian, which all began with the creation of Atlassian's 20% Time policy—a structured approach to innovation with a focus on the team.
In a 2008 blog post, Atlassian founder Cannon-Brookes outlined an experiment to test the efficacy of 20% Time at Atlassian. He set aside $1,000,000 to cover 20% Time for over 70 engineers for 6 months.
How did the experiment work?
Developers chose their own project. They then negotiated with their Team Leader to budget time for their 20% project in amongst normal development activities, including their rotations through Support. Some developers took time in multiple small blocks. Some locked themselves away for longer periods with signs warding off disturbances. Some teams even trialed a “20% Week” in between release cycles.
Each project was listed on Atlassian's internal Confluence wiki, with manual tracking of days expended. Projects that got incorporated into products were moved to a virtual ‘Hall of Fame’ while other projects were retired.
Interestingly, the projects that were incorporated into products actually consumed very little 20% Time. Once a concept was proven, it was typically adopted by a product manager and incorporated into the normal stream of development. The bulk of work on the feature (adding functionality, testing, perfecting) was therefore done in normal development time. As a result, Hall of Fame projects typically took only 1-5 days.
The trial ended up running for a year and led to the following results:
Atlassian's 20% Time results at a glance (after 1-year trial):
1 year
48 projects: 25 in progress, 16 incorporated into products, 7 retired
248 days of effort = 1.1% time (well under the 20% cap)
34 people
8 developer blog posts
Atlassian continued 20% Time
You could call 20% Time incremental innovation—it's driving continual improvement around the team, fostering thought processes and culture with constraint."
Dominic Price, Head of R&D and Work Futurist at Atlassian
After the year-long trial, the management team at Atlassian decided to continue with 20% Time. In a 2009 blog post, Business Intelligence Manager John Rotenstein outlined the goals of the new program:
The goals of 20% Time:
To encourage innovation in products, development techniques, and the Atlassian development ecosystem.
Not every 20% Time project has to lead to shipped features
Internal innovation is encouraged—new processes, techniques, libraries
Contribution to the larger ecosystem counts too, where it assists Atlassian
Failing is OK
Atlassian did not centrally manage 20% Time—rather, each team determined when they would take their 20% Time and what idea they wanted to focus on. Price explained the benefits of this flexibility:
One of the benefits of 20% Time was that it was easy to implement, especially in the early days of the company. But as the company grew, management made a conscious decision to keep it decentralized:
We don't mandate certain ways of doing it. We don't mandate when teams do it. We don't mandate whether they do it one day a week or one week every quarter. It's about managers and their teams—they know their environments better than I do. They know their customers, stakeholders, and deliverables. They decide.
