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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.

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#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 · WWC 2024

5:03 min

Flexible remote work strategies in software engineering

Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

2:16 min

Implementing a developer productivity framework and measuring output

Rajeev Rajan Rajeev Rajan · WWC 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 · WWC 2024

1:55 min

Shifting developer workloads and realistic AI productivity gains

Chris Heilmann +2 · LIVE

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