of features the teams could develop for a release, since resources are allocated accord- ing to the revenue generated. In terms of prioritising the features, a developer ex-
plained how he influenced the direction of the product: “[The CEOs] do kind of get a higher priority when were making our decisions. But in the end its really the devel-
opers and our product manager that decides what goes in and what goes out and have full control over what we do”. Only a few developers reported having this kind of
influence on the product, mostly those in the smaller teams.
4.2 FedEx Day
FedEx Day is one of the practices that Atlassian has adopted that allows the develop- ers to exercise their individual autonomy in developing software in a way that also
has direct benefits for Atlassian. Once, every three or four months, most developers voluntarily take a day to work on whatever they like. Just like an express courier, a
developer has to deliver something in a day. After they are finished they present and demonstrate their work to the rest of the people in the company. Some of this work
then ends up getting incorporated into the products. FedEx Day is not just a one or one-and-a-half day affair. There is actually a couple of weeks of preparation that go
on leading up to a FedEx Day and then, after FedEx Day, some of the finished pro- jects are made production-ready.
A FedEx Day coordinator does a lot of the organization that goes into making a FedEx Day a success both before and after the event. The FedEx Day coordinator lets
everyone know that a FedEx Day is coming up. He or she organizes a series of volun- tary lunchtime meetings where developers bring their lunch, to discuss FedEx Day
project ideas. Most people already have some kind of idea about what they want to do, for instance: something about the product that’s been bothering them for months,
some new technology that they want to try out or some new feature that they think would be brilliant but cannot get other people to agree. Some developers go to the
meetings not quite sure what they want to do, looking to be inspired by other people’s ideas. Developers are not restricted to working on the product they normally work
with, “it can be anything you want.” Developer.
As FedEx Day approaches, developers write up their FedEx Day ideas as “FedEx Orders”, which are short descriptions of what they aim to achieve. Other developers
comment on these “FedEx Orders”, offering hints, suggestions and ideas. Watching the developers work during FedEx Day, the sense of excitement and fo-
cus is palpable. People work more intently for the time during FedEx Day than at any other time. Developers described the adrenaline and sense of exhilaration and gut
wrenching pressure they feel when they are competing in a FedEx Day. The whole time the ticking clock hangs over them like the sword of Damocles. Developers feel a
genuine sense of pressure, they want to show off their abilities and prove that their ideas will work.
Instead of their usual development process that includes producing automated tests and documentation, “[y]ou just blast out the feature, hack it out however you want”
Developer. This offers what developers perceive as a pleasant change of pace from the usual, and more conservative, day-to-day development process. These things are
added later if the feature is adopted in one of the products.
After a full day of intense activity, the developers present their projects to one an- other. Experienced FedEx Day developers also know that an impressive presentation
can make or break a FedEx Day project. As a result they always make sure that they set aside time to create a convincing presentation, even if it means that the last one or
two features aren’t quite finished. One of the veteran team leaders commented that: “the easiest way to impress people [in FedEx Day] is to develop something flashy…
if the demo looks good… it works out.”
After watching everyone’s presentation, people vote on which projects they thought were the best. The winner gets a prize: an attractive trophy with FedEx vans on it
and, perhaps most importantly, bragging rights for the next couple of months. In the weeks following FedEx Days, developers write blog posts about their FedEx
projects sometimes with some gentle prodding by the FedEx Day coordinator. The FedEx Day coordinator then organizes the publication of some of these FedEx Day
Project write-ups on Atlassian’s external blogs. Some of the projects then make it in to the product backlogs. Sometimes the FedEx Day project will be included as op-
tional extras that customers can download.
4.3 Benefits of FedEx Day
