Set Your Teams Up for Improved and Enduring Velocity
summary
Prescribes an explicit percent of engineering capacity for maintenance work (author uses an 80/20 capacity split), then aligns the entire org into two product sprints followed by a synchronized Tech Foundation week where guilds work together on refactors, dependency bumps and platform adoption, and defrags calendars with Deep Work Wednesdays and coordination Mondays. Applied at two scale‑ups (100–150 engineers) it produces a clear, sustained uptick in velocity and reduced attrition.
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chapters (18)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:06Engineering teams feel slow
- 8:32Two diseases killing velocity
- 13:30Non-tech stakeholders misunderstand velocity
- 15:38No scalable solutions for tech debt
- 18:50Stopping to fix foundations fails
- 20:15Secure tech debt capacity agreement
- 25:17Small tech debt efforts don’t work
- 27:09Defrag and align team cadence
- 32:54Weekly context switching still hurts
- 34:20Defrag weekly calendar
- 37:36Proven results
- 39:48Overcoming stakeholder resistance
- 41:16Q&A
- 43:26Q&A
- 47:47Q&A
- 57:26Q&A
- 59:15Closing
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