What is Technical Spike? — UK Software Development Guide
Direct Answer
A technical spike is a time-boxed research task in agile development — a fixed period (typically 1–5 days) dedicated to exploring a technical uncertainty or proving feasibility of a particular approach before committing to it in a user story. Spikes produce knowledge (documents, proof-of-concept code, architecture recommendations) rather than production-ready software.
Technical-spike in the UK
Technical spikes are valuable in UK software development for: evaluating NHS API integration complexity before estimating (FHIR R4 UK Core profiles have implementation gotchas that require exploration), assessing HMRC MTD API compatibility with a specific accounting data model, evaluating cloud service provider options for UK GDPR data residency, and estimating legacy modernisation complexity before committing to a fixed price. For Innovate UK grant applications: spikes that explore genuine technological uncertainty provide strong evidence for the "Idea — Technical Innovation" criterion.
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