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
According to one team leader, developers “get to work on things that they really want to do”. The developers themselves share this perception. For instance one developer
commented that he “love[s] doing [FedEx Day] because it is something that I thought of myself and its something that hasnt really been done before.” It provides develop-
ers with a “creative outlet” that some developers feel they need.
As a result of FedEx Day, the developers “make almost individual contribution to the product, makes them identify with the product a lot more”. Another team leader’s
statements provided another example of the perceived benefits: “I think the best thing about FedEx is developer morale, even if we don’t get a lot of usable products out,
and we do, but even if we didn’t, the benefit to morale is incalculable, because people get to go and do fun stuff that stops burnout, it lets people play with new ideas, it lets
everybody know that their ideas and their thought processes are valued, and so I think that’s the best, people get the chance to drop everything else, do something fun, and
Atlassian gets value out of it, because the stuff that comes out of there are connected, and can shift [the direction of the product].”
The effect on productivity that providing people with greater individual autonomy predicted by some of the psychology literature [18-20] is also confirmed by the ex-
perience of FedEx Day at Atlassian. One team leader estimated that “people get about three days of work done in that one day, it’s amazing”. The intensity with which peo-
ple work and their productivity was confirmed by our own observations.
Most of the interviewees cited the degree of participation in the decision-making process, with respect to decisions about the products that they are working on and the
company as a whole, as one of the best things about working at Atlassian. Interest- ingly, this was despite the observations that individual developers did not seem to
exercise a much direct influence over the selection and prioritization of requirements, especially in the larger teams. One developer said that the best thing about working at
Atlassian was he is “part of that decision making process that decides what goes into
the product. So I feel that I also have control over what my product does, and what my work is going to be.” Similarly, another developer commented that “Ive never
really felt that there is a huge impedance between things that I want to do and where the company is going.” FedEx Day appears to play a role in fostering this feeling
among the Atlassian employees.
4.4 FedEx Day Challenges
