Cut me some slack
summary
Argues that deliberately reserving 20% slack in each iteration — e.g. commit to the recent minimum velocity (26 story points) and leave 3–5 story points unplanned — lets teams absorb emergencies, fix technical debt incrementally, and run a half-day research slot at sprint end. Shows a 3x3 sliding-puzzle demo (GitHub by mr. Lorenzo) to illustrate lost flexibility when you fill slack, cites CI flakiness, Sonar warnings and velocity swings like 30/20/40 as evidence that slack produces steadier delivery, less overtime and rising long‑term velocity.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction and setup
- 1:47What is organizational slack
- 4:06Why slack matters in agile
- 9:25Game of 15 analogy for efficiency
- 14:27How to achieve slack in iterations
- 25:51Benefits of investing in slack
- 26:58Q&A and closing
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