[cstrasen]

We are having a 20% time at my company (Medigo) since almost 5 years. Though the effects are hard to prove I see these:

  - obviously great for hiring
  - as we are not in a position to offer super advanced technical projects to tinker around with, it may have helped retention in a few cases, maybe general
  - one side project made it into a successful in-house product
  - it is sometimes a useful gap-filler if a project/backlog is not ready enough to start or too crowded on the dev side (a rare problem, ha!)

The biggest advantage though I feel is that it frees from hierarchy, planning and (most) coordination needs. Agile or not, the overheads are real. Developers often "know" at the back of their head what is the right thing to do. Let them do it. 20% is great for learning responsible autonomy.

Slightly OT but I wonder what the readers of this thread have experienced with this model and how acceptance in the wider company was handled.