Teams that balance well-being ship better

Keep every sprint balanced between innovation, delivery, and resilience.

Work Type Focus keeps product and engineering aligned on what to do now versus what to protect for later. Track where time goes, reduce interruptions, and buy back capacity for thoughtful work.

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≤ 15% unplanned Teams that cap interruptions regain predictability and morale.
Work Type Focus Model
Why this matters

Prioritize in the right order to keep quality and predictability

Move from worst-case to best-case work. Protect time for innovation once incidents are under control and the product foundation is healthy.

  • Stabilize production and absorb interruptions without derailing the roadmap.
  • Pay down complexity so new features stay fast to ship.
  • Enhance what exists before adding net-new capabilities.
  • Invest in experiments once the system is calm and customers are happy.
Healthy balance

Use the model to agree on a mix that flexes by sprint: 10% innovation this week, 20% next, based on incident load.

If you fall into the “Not this” column, use the ladder below to climb back quickly.

Examples

Work types your team should name explicitly

Unstructured innovation
Experimentation
  • Retrospective outcomes
  • A/B tests and hypotheses
  • Hackathons and spikes
  • Sandbox explorations
Add new capabilities
Greenfield delivery
  • New features and flows
  • Feature flags
  • New infrastructure
  • New platform bets
Enhance existing capabilities
Upgrade what exists
  • Quality and UX improvements
  • Finish MVP gaps
  • Extend AI capabilities
  • Expand infrastructure capacity
Manage complexity
Keep the system clean
  • Refactoring and tech debt
  • Coding guidelines
  • RFCs and architecture docs
  • Automation and observability
Unplanned work
Interruptions
  • Production bugs and incidents
  • Unexpected scope changes
  • Critical outages
  • Escalations that break sprint focus
Order & ownership

Climb the ladder from interruptions to innovation

  1. Unplanned Work / Interruptions — Bugs and incidents must be prioritized; keep them below 10–15% to stay productive. Product classifies issues while engineering handles fixes during the sprint.
  2. Manage Complexity — Refactoring, docs, and standards that keep the code base understandable. Engineers own this debt so new work remains fast and safe.
  3. Enhance Existing Capabilities — Product and engineering jointly choose improvements based on impact and effort to delight users sooner.
  4. Add New Capabilities — Product sets priorities; engineering shapes and ships greenfield features with confidence.
  5. Unstructured Innovation / Experimentation — Spikes, A/B tests, and research to spark fresh ideas once the system is calm.

Well-being is the hidden velocity metric

A balanced focus opens space for creativity and recovery. Limit interruptions, reserve time for improvement, and morale follows—productivity, retention, and predictability rise together.

Healthy mix Innovation flexes from 10-20% per sprint based on incident load.

Get Work Type Focus for your team

Track work types automatically, visualize where time goes, and steer every sprint toward a healthier balance.

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