Never Having Enough Time for Tech Debts?

Hello all!

Today, let's talk about something often overlooked, but absolutely necessary for ensuring a smooth and productive Sprint: Slack.

What is Slack in Your Sprint?

Slack in project management isn’t just the popular communication tool we all know—here, it refers to the time allocated in a Sprint that isn’t assigned to any specific feature development, but can be used for necessary housekeeping tasks like tech debt resolution, refactoring, and maintenance.

In Agile, every Sprint has a set of planned features or user stories to be completed. BUT to ensure the health of your codebase and avoid accumulating debt, it's highly important to plan some time of the Sprint for non-feature development activities. This portion of time is often referred to as Slack.

Why Should You Use Slack in Each Sprint?

Tech debt, while sometimes unavoidable, can accumulate over time and impact the velocity of your development team.

When you book space in your Sprints to address this debt, you ensure the team isn't constantly playing catch-up or pushing issues to future Sprints.

Also, when you let people refactor code during this dedicated Slack time you ensure that the code remains clean, maintainable, and scalable, which ultimately improves the quality and speed of future development.

How Much Slack Should You Allocate?

A common recommendation is to allocate 5 story points worth of Slack per Sprint. This gives the team enough flexibility to

• address tech debt,
• improve existing code,
• work on tasks that ensure long-term sustainability, without compromising the delivery of core features.

If you’re working with a larger team or a particularly technical project, you may adjust this number accordingly.

The goal is to use this time for activities like:

• Refactoring legacy code
• Updating dependencies
• Fixing bugs that were flagged but weren't prioritized in earlier Sprints
• Improving code quality and testing coverage
• Addressing any immediate technical blockers

Other Agile Tips for Managing Slack

1. Prioritize tech debt with the team;
2. Ensure communication with Stakeholders so that everyone involved knows why this time is important;
3. Monitor and adjust the amount of Slack if there is more work in tech debt than expected;
4. Use Retrospectives to discuss Slack effectiveness;
5. Employ Continuous Improvement.

Final Thoughts

Slack isn’t just wasted time—it’s a key part of keeping your project’s health in check. By allocating story points for Slack in your Sprint, you’re making sure the long-term success of your project is prioritized alongside your immediate feature development goals.

How do you handle tech debt and non-feature development tasks in your Sprints?

What’s your experience with incorporating Slack time in your project planning?

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Best, Olha