# Interrupts in software teams: using unplanned work to your advantage

DevFeed: [Interrupts in software teams: using unplanned work to your advantage](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/interrupts-in-software-teams-using-unplanned-work-to-your-advantage-11850.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://incident.io/blog/interrupts-in-software-teams>)

Author: Alex Russell-Saw

Published: 2022-08-09T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [The incident.io Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-incident-io-blog.md>)

Topics: [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>), [Tech Debt](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tech-debt.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident.md>)

Tags: [customer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/customer.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident.md>), [incident-channel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-channel.md>), [incident-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-management.md>), [incident-response](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-response.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [outage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/outage.md>), [post-mortem](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/post-mortem.md>), [slack-incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/slack-incident.md>), [software](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/software.md>), [strategy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/strategy.md>), [support](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/support.md>), [tech-debt](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tech-debt.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that software teams can turn unplanned interrupt work into an advantage by explicitly allocating engineering capacity for it. At incident.io, a dedicated "Product Responder" handles customer and engineering issues, delivers small fixes quickly, triages larger problems, and helps distribute knowledge across the team.

## Source excerpt

Interrupts can ruin productivity. Let's look at how you can turn them into an advantage.