WeAreDevelopers Logo WeAreDevelopers
Sign in
For You LIVE
World Congress 2022 • Jun 15, 2022

How to make a 4 day week work for everyone

Kit Barclay , Jake Levine

When transitioning to a 32-hour schedule, Awin realized modern tooling wasn't enough. By restructuring teams around Conway's Law, they slashed cognitive load and actively increased total engineering output.

Pause
Mute Enter Fullscreen
#1 about 4 min

Introduction to Awin and its affiliate marketing business

Understanding Awin's organizational context helps contextualize their successful transition to a four-day work week.

#2 about 5 min

Challenging the necessity of a five-day work week

Modern workplace tools and remote methodologies make the arbitrary five-day work schedule unnecessary for maintaining output.

#3 about 3 min

Structuring flexible policies for a four-day work week

Implementing a flexible company-wide policy allows software engineering employees to choose their preferred day off without financial penalty.

#4 about 7 min

Automating development processes to accommodate shorter team schedules

Decreasing working hours forces engineering teams to heavily prioritize process automation and strict calendar management.

#5 about 10 min

Identifying cognitive load and organizational bottlenecks within teams

Shorter timelines expose how excessive responsibilities and unclear communication modes overload the cognitive capacity of engineering teams.

#6 about 9 min

Applying team topologies to reorganize engineering team boundaries

Reorganizing engineers into specific stream-aligned, enabling, platform, and complicated subsystem teams strictly limits unneeded cross-team communication friction.

#7 about 7 min

Accelerating service delivery with a solution architecture team

Empowering a dedicated solution architecture team removes technical blockers and reduces the cognitive burden on product delivery teams.

#8 about 9 min

Fostering a culture of flexible communication and collaboration

Embracing asynchronous workflows and pair programming ensures momentum continues even when individual contributors take their flexible days off.

#9 about 5 min

Measuring productivity and business impact of reduced hours

Analyzing ticket resolution velocity and incident response metrics quantitatively validates that a four-day week improves developer productivity.

#10 about 4 min

Resolving scheduling and client billing concerns in shorter weeks

Coordinating fixed times for agile ceremonies ensures teams maintain full alignment while preserving their flexible rest days.

Matching moments

2:05 min

Transitioning to a reduced 36-hour work week

Niklas Wiesauer Niklas Wiesauer · World Congress 2024

5:03 min

Flexible remote work strategies in software engineering

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

2:16 min

Implementing a developer productivity framework and measuring output

Rajeev Rajan Rajeev Rajan · World Congress 2024

4:10 min

Preventing developer burnout by avoiding toxic productivity trends

Katja Träumner

3:28 min

Fostering flexibility, remote work, and personal wellbeing in tech

Eva-Maria Weidner Eva-Maria Weidner · World Congress 2024

1:55 min

Shifting developer workloads and realistic AI productivity gains

Chris Heilmann Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

More from World Congress 2022

What the heck do "declarative" and "reactive" actually mean? thumbnail
30:40
about 4 years ago

What the heck do "declarative" and "reactive" actually mean?

André Kovac

The Design and Evolution of C++ thumbnail
1:01:15
over 4 years ago

The Design and Evolution of C++

Bjarne Stroustrup

But, you're not Facebook thumbnail
31:12
over 4 years ago

But, you're not Facebook

Kristijan Ristovski

Communicate efficiently with Software Architecture Diagrams thumbnail
28:11
over 4 years ago

Communicate efficiently with Software Architecture Diagrams

Simon Lasselsberger

Get Ready for Jakarta EE 10! thumbnail
42:53
over 4 years ago

Get Ready for Jakarta EE 10!

Ivar Grimstad

Keep your code refactorable thumbnail
26:46
over 4 years ago

Keep your code refactorable

Gerrit Stapper

Related videos

1000 things we tried for new work. Here are the results. thumbnail
29:33
World Congress 2024 • about 2 years ago

1000 things we tried for new work. Here are the results.

Niklas Wiesauer

ShapeShift: Reinventing Agile for a B2B SaaS Scale-Up thumbnail
5:11
World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

ShapeShift: Reinventing Agile for a B2B SaaS Scale-Up

Milton Leon Rodriguez

How to be balanced in a software development team thumbnail
28:54
LIVE • almost 6 years ago

How to be balanced in a software development team

Martyna Zurek

Fast Flow, Not Fast Fluff: Embracing an Eclectic DevOps Coaching Approach thumbnail
57:53
LIVE • over 2 years ago

Fast Flow, Not Fast Fluff: Embracing an Eclectic DevOps Coaching Approach

Jacob Duijzer

Do you know how fast you were developing? thumbnail
25:42
World Congress 2024 • about 2 years ago

Do you know how fast you were developing?

Markus Walker

Hidden efficiency - How to enable your non-engineers as a CTO thumbnail
24:40
World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

Hidden efficiency - How to enable your non-engineers as a CTO

Andi Stryz

Related articles

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.