Dev Day vs Dev Hours
Dev Day vs Dev Hours
Learn about dev day and dev hours, which one to use, when to use and how to make the most of a developer time in an effective way.
We all know engineers’ time is expensive and it could be challenging for them to find enough time to focus on some of the core work like development, coding, documentation, reviews, etc. Today, we will learn about how to effectively use focus time and will explore some key difference between the dev day and dev hours.
💡Goal is to increase effectiveness through focused dev times and reduce context switching.
Lets look into some key differences of dev day and dev hours.
Dev Day
Dev day are a full day block in a calendar to allow set of engineers or teams to focus on individual or team level work. Below are some important points:
Dev day works great if your meeting takes only 10-20% of your time per week, typically a Junior to Senior Engineer.
Dev day is great for teams to have one single day where they can collaborate internally.
Dev day is hard to move around, especially when they are owned by the manager or lead.
Dev day means you say NO to all the meetings, otherwise what’s the point, exceptions applied.
Dev Hours
Dev hours are focused time slots throughout the week for individuals to focus on core IC level tasks. Below are some important points:
Dev hours work well for Senior+ Engineers when its hard to avoid frequent high priority meetings.
Dev hours work well on individual level, it may be hard to come up with a shared schedule for a team.
Dev hours are flexible, can be moved easily depending on priorities.
Dev hours do not mean you say YES to all the meetings, finding the right balance based on priority is important.
💡Dev Day and Dev Hours can also be used together. Plan and use as per needs.
⚠️Dev Day does not work for me anymore!
I always had a dev day, typically Wednesdays, however, recently realized its not working. With my recent growth, I have been part of large scope discussions and meetings which are hard to avoid or setup while respecting everyone’s dev day. My dev day started to turn into half meetings day.
That’s when I switched to 100% dev hours, focused time slots couple of days a week, that can be moved around easily depending on priority. This works smoothly, gives me an option to say No or move my slot accordingly.
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thanks for the post, great weekend read