Improvement Week—A way of paying back product debt and tech debt

Improvement Week—A way of paying back product debt and tech debt

Our team strives to deliver features with the highest value for our customers. With limited bandwidth, we must prioritize our work carefully. This can sometimes lead to features not being fully implemented. One reason might be that certain parts of a feature are not as crucial right now as other features.

Similar situations arise in the technology area. We might not have implemented a feature in an extensible way or in the right place. As time passes and our knowledge and understanding improve, yesterday's feasible solution becomes today's tech debt.

One way our team addresses product and tech debt is through "Improvement Week." Once every quarter, our team pauses work for a whole week on new features and focuses solely on improving existing features and code.

This is based on improvement tickets we create when we consciously decide to take on debt or when we encounter issues in our daily work. However, we're not talking about extravagant, unnecessary improvements here.

We actively inform our stakeholders about the timing and reasons for the Improvement Week to gain their understanding and acceptance.

The Improvement Weeks enhance our predictability and help us maintain a balance between new features and accumulated debt. This approach provides customers with an even better experience while enabling us to consistently deliver high-quality features with high velocity.

What do you think of this approach? How do you deal with product debt and tech debt?

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