I’ve always been curious, how do you and your team at REVSYS prioritize what to work on? Obviously client work pays the bills, but your team has been heavily involved in the Python and Django community for years, either serving on boards/working groups/committees/etc or helping maintain a myriad of open source libraries and helpful community sites. I figure each person has a certain level of autonomy to prioritize, but do ya'll have something like "10% time" rule or is it more fluid and circumstanstial?
Hey Josh!
It’s SUPER fluid and circumstantial. We don’t have a formal “10% time”, but do encourage and allow people to work on Open Source.
On one hand, we’re all here at REVSYS because we’re Open Source people so it would be weird to not allow everyone to work a bit on community things.
On the other hand, it’s also in effect some light marketing for REVSYS. Many clients find us from these contributions, recommendations/referrals from other community members in part because of our contributions or at least listen to us because of our long history in Open Source.
Us being on the various boards and committees are a part of that too. Django being healthy, well supported, and growing is obviously a bit self-serving if we’re being honest.
As for prioritizing exactly what to work on. Wish we did have a system, but it’s usually a mixture of:
- Do we realistically have time to take this on? (Usually no)
- Is the hole we’d be leaving important enough to override #2?
- Would the time spent working on X bring in enough customers/leads to justify some extra time on it? (Usually no)
- Is the REVSYSer really just into this thing and wants to do it?
#2 is usually where we feel an obligation to not leave a bit of code languishing or because a client needed it last year so we took over maintenance long term.
But as you tell, no real formal system or rules, just vibes I guess!!! 🤣
