I think the usual term is "innovation tokens", from the "choose boring technology" post at https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/ch

I think the usual term is "innovation tokens", from the "choose boring technology" post at https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology. It's definitely very helpful in preventing projects from choosing all the shiny new tech at once while not preventing any all innovation at all. Some of the shiny tech is actually worthwhile, after all.