Tech Due Diligence TEAM-4: Development Process and Agile Practices

Pick a structured development process that fits your team size and product stage. For most software teams, that means regular iterations (1-2 week sprints for Scrum, continuous flow with WIP limits for Kanban), planning sessions to scope and estimate upcoming work, daily standups for coordination and blocker identification, a visible prioritised backlog, and retrospectives to identify and act on improvements. Track estimation and velocity consistently. Whether you use story points, ideal days, or t-shirt sizes, the key is consistency over time. Use velocity data for release planning and setting realistic stakeholder expectations. A stable velocity matters more than a high one. Protect time for technical health. Allocate a consistent percentage of capacity to bug fixes and maintenance (typically 10-15%), technical debt reduction (typically 15-20%), and infrastructure and tooling improvements (typically 5-10%). Track this allocation so feature pressure does not quietly consume all your engineering time. Make retrospectives genuinely useful. Use structured formats to identify what went well, what did not, and what specific improvement actions to take. Assign owners and deadlines to those actions and track them to completion. A retrospective that produces no changes is time wasted. Introduce work-in-progress (WIP) limits to reduce context switching and improve flow. Engineers should generally work on no more than one or two items at a time. Track cycle time alongside velocity for a more complete picture of delivery health. Keep the process transparent to stakeholders. Provide regular updates on progress, risks, and blockers. Dashboards or reports that stakeholders can check themselves reduce interruptions while keeping everyone informed.