Kit Barclay & Jake Levine

How to make a 4 day week work for everyone

How can you increase productivity with 20% less time? This company's answer wasn't better tools, but a radical redesign of their engineering teams.

How to make a 4 day week work for everyone
#1about 7 minutes

Understanding the premise of a four-day work week

The four-day work week is a cultural shift that values output over hours worked, offering benefits like improved well-being and flexibility.

#2about 6 minutes

How the engineering department adapted to the new schedule

Adapting to a shorter week required focusing on automation, clear communication via agile coaches, and disciplined scheduling to ensure team availability.

#3about 6 minutes

How the four-day week revealed hidden team overload

The push for efficiency highlighted that the root problem wasn't a lack of automation but that teams were overloaded with too many disparate responsibilities.

#4about 13 minutes

Using Team Topologies to restructure for better flow

Applying the Team Topologies framework helps clarify team responsibilities by creating dedicated platform, enabling, and complicated-subsystem teams to reduce cognitive load.

#5about 6 minutes

The role of a solution architecture enabling team

A dedicated solution architecture team acts as an enabling function, facilitating cross-team collaboration and technical planning to unblock product teams.

#6about 8 minutes

Cultural and communication shifts from a shorter week

A four-day week fosters a culture of efficiency, encouraging practices like pairing and clear communication channels to maintain momentum and avoid single points of failure.

#7about 8 minutes

Measuring the impact on productivity and technology

The transition resulted in a 5.6% increase in resolved tickets per full-time employee, faster incident acknowledgment, and a move toward business-impact metrics.

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