Wouldn't coding up a prototype be more in line with asking for permission? You code up the prototype to demonstrate your idea then ask your team if you can proceed with it. I would say that's a solid, proactive way to get your ideas across.
Depends on your working environment. At my current position, if I code up a prototype during work hours, I'm subverting our EPMO, since it's not an approved project. I've had great success doing various prototypes like this, but I am not waiting for permission to do them.
Bringing those prototypes to production is another matter. In any organization, there are processes that need to be followed to onboard a new application, platform, pattern, etc. If those aren't followed, the implementation won't be nearly as effective—especially long-term.
In some work environments, you are encouraged to get 40 hours a week, regardless of whether those 40 hours are necessarily put towards what are perceived as the "highest value" endeavors. So if you are blocked on everything else, why not take the remaining time and put it towards things you personally believe to be beneficial to the project? It is certainly better than sitting on your thumbs or asking people who are already busy what they think you should be doing.
Is this work in lieu of your regular tasks? If not, clearly you don't have enough to do. If so, that's grounds for dismissal. Unless, you got permission...
Our manager doesn't have a clue how systems work, so it's up to us to find the best way. I know the various areas we need to develop to push the system forward and it is up to me to find the best way to do it. If I learn something new that makes me rethink something, then I am more than welcome to revisit it and try out some new things. If it ends up with a better system then we all benefit. At the end of the day the work that needs to get done does get done.
Obviously I do have to use my judgement to allocate time appropriately. If there is a customer screaming at accounts because they were overcharged or whatever, then it is quite obvious I need to resolve that issue rather than work on a new way to style our buttons, but for the majority of the time it is up to me.
I do also spend quite a lot of my own time working on various things where it is a bit ambiguous as to whether it is 'proper' work or not. I enjoy the work I do because I don't feel like I am working in a sweat shop..
Maybe I'm just lucky to have always found a job where management trusts the developers.
Yes! I would be really surprised if an organisation didn't expect that to happen!
When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at.
Nobody is sitting over my shoulder looking at everything I do and I'd be right out the door if that was ever the case. I'd expect professional software engineers to spend at least a bit of their time working on this sort of stuff!
> When solving pretty much any problem that I don't have an existing cookie-cutter solution for, I do some prototyping as part of the process of figuring out how it works. Sometimes I do this for arbitrary things that are irritating me, or that I think might be worth looking at.
Well, of course this is how normal development works. This is the work I am talking about that would _not_ get done because the OP was working on a prototype to solve some _other_ problem.
