🚀 What Is a Spike?

A spike is a focused research or exploration activity used to reduce uncertainty in software development. Teams use spikes to investigate technical challenges, evaluate multiple solution approaches, or clarify unclear requirements before committing to full implementation.

A spike typically results in one or more of the following:

A prototype or proof of concept
A clear decision between alternative approaches
A deeper understanding of risks, constraints, and dependencies

👤 Who Should Perform a Spike?

Spikes are a shared responsibility between developers and architects.

Architects usually initiate spikes when decisions affect system design, scalability, or long-term architecture.
Developers often execute spikes when uncertainty exists around implementation details, integrations, or feasibility.

The most effective spikes happen when both roles collaborate, ensuring the outcome is technically sound and architecturally aligned.

🧠 Why Spikes Matter

1. Clarify Ambiguity

Spikes help teams break down vague or complex requirements and replace assumptions with facts.

2. Reduce Risk

They surface technical limitations, performance concerns, or integration issues early—before they become costly problems.

3. Improve Estimates

Insights from spikes lead to more accurate effort and timeline estimates, reducing guesswork during planning.

4. Enable Better Design

By exploring multiple approaches, teams can select solutions that are more scalable, maintainable, and future-proof.

5. Boost Team Confidence

When developers clearly understand the problem space, they work with greater confidence and productivity.

🛠️ Real-World Example: SPFx Web Part Re-architecture

Our team recently faced a challenge with an existing SPFx web part that was heavily used across multiple SharePoint pages. Due to technical limitations, the solution needed re-architecture. We had two options:

Update the existing SPFx solution
Build a brand-new SPFx web part

While starting fresh was attractive from a design perspective, it introduced a major risk. The existing web part stored unique instance data in its properties across many pages. It was unclear whether this data could be reused or if a complex migration would be required.

To address this uncertainty, we conducted a one-day spike to:

Analyze how the existing instance data was stored
Test whether a new web part could read and reuse that data
Validate if a separate migration activity could be avoided

Outcome:
The spike was successful. We confirmed that the new web part could reuse the existing instance data without migration. This gave the team confidence to proceed with a clean, maintainable implementation—saving significant time and effort.

✅ How to Run an Effective Spike

Define a clear goal – Be explicit about the question you want answered
Time-box the effort – Prevent open-ended research
Collaborate early – Include both developers and architects
Document findings – Share learnings with the team
Decide next steps – Convert outcomes into backlog items or decisions

🧩 Conclusion

Spikes are not a delay—they are an accelerator. They empower teams to make informed decisions, reduce technical risk, and deliver higher-quality solutions. Whether you’re a developer or an architect, treating spikes as a core part of your workflow leads to smarter planning and more confident execution.

Why Spikes Are Crucial Before Starting Actual Work