Cool-down Sprints

If we were to run sprints back to back, there would not be any time to pause and reflect. We will be stuck in the endless loop of running sprint after sprint without thinking about what can be changed or improved to improve our productivity and to deliver better results.

Therefore, we need to schedule two weeks for a cool-down and hence called cool-down sprint. This is a period with no new scheduled work where we can breathe, meet as needed, reflect on the progress we made, and consider what can be done next. During cool-down, programmers and designers on project teams are free to work on whatever they want. After working hard to ship their six-week projects, they enjoy having time that’s under their control. They use it to fix bugs, explore new ideas, or try out new technical possibilities.

Here are some of the possible items which can be done in a cool-down sprint

1. Refactoring: When developers strive to complete a task or meet deadlines, they may compromise and produce code they are not proud of. This cool-down sprint gives them a chance to refactor any piece of code they like to improve. Read more in our blog post titled Code Smells and Code Refactoring.
2. Upskilling: While working on projects, sometimes people encounter technical challenges or a particular piece of technology that they want to spend more time with to learn in depth; they can spend their cool-down sprint to upgrade their skill set. Developers can also start a fast learning sprint if they would like to do so. We have created different learning roadmaps for upskilling our team members.
3. Explore alternate solutions: There is always a possibility that better alternatives exist for the solutions developers have implemented in their project. Therefore, if developers want to explore alternate solutions, tools, or processes of doing things that they have used in their project, this cool-down sprint can be used for that as well.
4. Technical Debt: Almost every project accumulates technical debt over a period of time. A cool-down sprint gives people time to review that technical debt and work on it to avoid issues in the future.
5. Housekeeping Tasks: Housekeeping tasks could be some maintenance-related chores that are needed to maintain your code base. It could be related to completing missing documentation or help guides, taking care of code repositories and git branches, or ensuring all third-party integrations are well maintained. One such example can be found in our blog post titled The Art of Managing Git Repositories.
6. Writing blog posts: If developers have solved a complex technical challenge or have done some work that they are proud of and would like to show to the world, it can be done by writing some blog posts. We have written detailed guidelines on how to build thought leadership by publishing the best work.
7. Monitoring Production Deployments: If developers have deployed a critical piece of work to production, the probability that something will break is non-zero. They can use this cool-down time to see how their work is performing in production under real-world scenarios. Developers can apply hot fixes as well if something is breaking. Therefore, this cool-down print can give developers extra time to tackle unforeseen issues.
8. Little work break: Developers can use this time to keep their schedule light if they have been freed from a project after a long time of association. This gives the developer time to relax, rejuvenate, and rethink.
9. Miscellaneous: Since a cooldown sprint gives control of their time back to developers, they can ultimately decide what they want to do in this cooldown sprint. They can also do a retrospective of how they managed work previously and make improvements in their process if there is a need. We have written a book titled Accelerate, which has some time-tested advice on how to grow professionally.