Question for software eng exec out there, may be a classic: How do you avoid long tails of undone "follow-ups" and "polishes" accumulating when the team moves on from features to features? Longer feature cycles? More developers? Polish sprints? Neither seems definitive.
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My team runs a “fix it” week every quarter. I would say the key part is the alignment and agreement between PM and Eng manager to reserve such kind of capacity, and can’t be purely relying on engineering excellence.
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That’s ~8% of the work days per year right? Do you think that is enough? How do you make sure that is enough? How do you avoid procrastination/Parkinson's law — “don’t worry about it right now, let’s just fix them later in the “fix it” weeks?”
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Replying to @timdream @evelyn_wara
I think some engineers have a tendency to want to do too much cleanup and polishing, even when it's not really important for long term maintainability. So I see value in pressure in either direction, depending on context. I think it depends on the codebase and the plans for it.

Apr 25, 2022 · 1:29 AM UTC
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