20% of Time for innovation

Is it easy to spend 20% of time on innovation and stuff that developers really like to do? I think definitely not and the success is not guaranteed …

  • When can a developer take his time?
  • What restrictions are there about what can and can’t be done in that time?
  • How do people manage their schedules? Should they manage it?
  • Is this time should be tracked?
  • How is it decided what people can work on?
  • How do you stop someone’s project if it’s deemed not useful? Who deems it this? Is there a committee? Peer review?
  • How do projects “graduate” from 20% time?
  • How is overall success of the program judged? $$? Customer value? Engineer happiness?
  • Should developers form a team, or should it be single projects?

But despite all these difficult questions probably it’s worth trying … What do you think?