A well-known Google’s successful formula is to release 20% of its employees’ time to work
on anything they want. When applying this approach to a project, do you think that the
absence of a structured decision-making process, driven by the project manager,
jeopardizes the delivery on cost, on time, and on the quality of the project? Explain why or
why not.
Google's approach of allowing employees' to take 20% of work time to focus on personal
projects has been praised and criticized at the same time. Some consider it beneficial because it
helps employees use this time to learn a new skill, work on personal projects, find smart ways to
do their job, and be innovative (Xu, 2020),
Most of the time employees are focused on mundane items that they will not have any time to
even think about what they do. If employees and management take the time to analyze their work
they could find ways to minimize waste and find a more efficient approach to complete or
manage their projects. Based on my experience the focus will be on completing a project on
time.
However, once the project is completed and we take time to review the performance we can see
there were several things we could have done better. Consequently, if we can take 20% of our
work time or even 10% and dedicate it to finding alternative approaches that can reduce the cost
of the project and increase the quality of the project, it would be a significant victory.
However, the main issue is that there is no time to spare since most projects have tight deadlines
and very limited budgets. The opportunity to try new approaches or work on personal projects is
near impossible as reported by employees of Atlassian (Xu, 2020). Atlassian said that releasing
new project frequently put so much pressure on its employees that they barely have any
downtime.
Therefore, it requires the collaboration of top management and employees to make this idea
fruitful. Furthermore, this approach can't be done using a structured framework that is more
constrictive. This is not something that should be supervised or managed by the project manager
(D’Onfro, 2015). The role of the project manager is to motivate, encourage and at a time guide
the employees.
on anything they want. When applying this approach to a project, do you think that the
absence of a structured decision-making process, driven by the project manager,
jeopardizes the delivery on cost, on time, and on the quality of the project? Explain why or
why not.
Google's approach of allowing employees' to take 20% of work time to focus on personal
projects has been praised and criticized at the same time. Some consider it beneficial because it
helps employees use this time to learn a new skill, work on personal projects, find smart ways to
do their job, and be innovative (Xu, 2020),
Most of the time employees are focused on mundane items that they will not have any time to
even think about what they do. If employees and management take the time to analyze their work
they could find ways to minimize waste and find a more efficient approach to complete or
manage their projects. Based on my experience the focus will be on completing a project on
time.
However, once the project is completed and we take time to review the performance we can see
there were several things we could have done better. Consequently, if we can take 20% of our
work time or even 10% and dedicate it to finding alternative approaches that can reduce the cost
of the project and increase the quality of the project, it would be a significant victory.
However, the main issue is that there is no time to spare since most projects have tight deadlines
and very limited budgets. The opportunity to try new approaches or work on personal projects is
near impossible as reported by employees of Atlassian (Xu, 2020). Atlassian said that releasing
new project frequently put so much pressure on its employees that they barely have any
downtime.
Therefore, it requires the collaboration of top management and employees to make this idea
fruitful. Furthermore, this approach can't be done using a structured framework that is more
constrictive. This is not something that should be supervised or managed by the project manager
(D’Onfro, 2015). The role of the project manager is to motivate, encourage and at a time guide
the employees.
