Most developers have them, an idea in the back of their mind for a project they'd like to write. Could be anything from a little utility app to automate something that they find tedious, through to the next big web 2.0/3.0 application that will change the world (or at least make them very rich). I know I always have a few that I've got on the boil from time to time. Mitch Denny has even gone as far as posting up some of his ideas. My biggest problem has always been finding the time between a fairly full on job, and a reasonably active social life, to sit down and make some significant progress on any of them. This in fact has formed part of my justification for taking a year off work and travelling to Argentina (for a full list of justifications see this post on our tangotrails blog).
I have been making some significant progress on a couple of my ideas over the past few months, and it has re-affirmed to me the professional value of having personal projects like these. The main project I've been working on is an idea to combine my technical side and my creative side. I won't say any more in this post, except that I want to see how far the web can push the way we experience the narrative form.
Because it is my project, and my idea I have full ownership over everything, good and bad. I have full ownership of the codebase, I have full control over the direction, over deadlines and milestones, I have full responsibility for testing and bugs, I'm even in charge of running a beta program (which I intend to do soon), and marketing the product. Legal issues, hosting provider, selection of tools, graphic art, everything is my responsibility, and mine alone. It has been a really educational experience to work on a project so fully from end to end, and not be able to assign parts of the application off that are "not my problem" to someone else. I am learning so much, not just about new technologies, but also some of the non-technical aspects of getting a project like this off the ground.
I think forward thinking companies should try to encourage these personal projects for their technical staff, even if the projects their developers want to work on don't wholly align with their business goals. I'm thinking along the lines of a company integrating personal project time into their staffs professional development plan. Something like allocating X days of your professional development time to a personal project. Of course you may need a project approval process, but this shouldn't be aimed at the business determining if the project is aligned with their goals, but more that the project is significantly challenging for the developer for her to really gain something out of it. Also, a short presentation of their work, in whatever state it is in after the allotted X days, would ensure the developer is kept honest, and that information is disseminated to other developers in the organisation.
I can see this benefiting this hypothetical forward looking company in a number of ways. For starters, I've seen a lot of developers get bored with what their business wants them to do on a day to day basis. Often developers end up in roles where the domain holds little or no interest for them, or if it once did, the constant focus on it destroys some of the enjoyment they once had. Focusing, even for a short time, on something completely different, that they are really interested in, will re-invigorate the developer. Also, having developers play with technologies outside of their normal sphere of day to day experience in the business, will make them a valuable asset if the business ever needs to consider any of those technologies in the future. Being able to advertise this approach to professional development would also attract the right sort of candidates when recruiting. A really forward thinking business may also be open to the possibility that one of their developers might just be creating the next big web 2.0/3.0 application and might even be willing to partner with them in an endeavour to commercialise it.
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:( You hit L4L right on the head
ReplyDelete3M was well known for doing just that - encouraging employees to pursue their own projects\learning on company time. Also, the company would bring in lecturers to speak on all sorts of topics. Not sure they still do it in this age of short-term thinking.
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