> practice and develop their skills in a very forgiving environment

Oh man, in my experience non-technical teams have been the polar opposite. It's sometimes difficult to reign in what sounds like "simple features" but are actually large technical lifts. They sometimes expect it to be "just a new button", but have difficulty grasping the work behind that.

In my experience it's just as likely to be more work as less work.

I suppose if the team truly gave you autonomy and didn't over-expect it might not be too bad... but it's stress inducing in my experience.