Cool-down for "AI-Powered Student Recommendation Engine"

What is Cool-down?

Cool-down is a crucial two-week, unscheduled break after each six-week development cycle. It's a time for the team to breathe, reflect, and prepare for the next cycle without the pressure of scheduled work.

During cool-down, builders are free to work on whatever they want, typically focusing on:

• Bug fixes and small improvements
• Technical clean-up and refactoring
• Explorations and technical spikes for future ideas
• Publishing help documentation or marketing announcements for recently shipped features

It's important to remember that cool-down work is intentionally ad-hoc and not tracked on Hill Charts. If something is too big for cool-down, it should be shaped into a pitch and compete at the betting table for a future cycle.

This phase helps maintain momentum, prevents backlog bloat, and ensures the team can reset and choose the next bets wisely.