Table of Contents
Prologue
Ramadan can prove to be a unique challenge for the schedule of a software engineer, especially if they have to juggle work and non-work-related matters during the month. A software engineer’s questions are likely to include how they can manage their Agile software development projects around their schedule and the schedule of their teammates, as well as how to communicate and deliver the software product effectively during the period.
My experience with remote agile teams shows that many of the issues that could affect delivery are not directly related to fasting but rather to unplanned and uncoordinated adjustments to the availability of team members. Changes in the working hours, meeting schedules, and response intervals of individual members not acknowledged and coordinated by the team can add up to more significant disruptions than those caused by Ramadan-related restrictions. This is the actual topic of this article.
1. 🕐 Structure Work around your Fasting Schedule
Time-blocking your day around your energy patterns and not just the calendar is a huge productivity win:
- Working in the post-suhoor focus window (5:30-9:00 AM): time to do heavy lifting, cognitively intense work like architecture, debugging, code reviews
- Lower-energy afternoon window (1:00-4:00 PM): routine ticket work, meetings, documentation
- Post-iftar (7:00-8:00 PM) window where you’ve broken your fast, said your evening prayers, and have a nice focused 45-60 minute block to finalize pull requests or plan your day
It’s not that this is a strict prescription by any means (individual energy patterns will vary), but finding your own high and low energy windows and aligning them with your fasting schedule (rather than the other way around) is the key lever to unlocking Ramadan productivity as a software engineer
That same energy-first approach is what we teach for sprint capacity planning, where you treat your available hours as a calculated number rather than an aspirational target
2. 😴 Protect Sleep and Recovery
Late-night Tarawih prayers and early morning Suhoor are genuinely cutting into my sleep schedule. Let me suggest a few practical solutions:
- A 15-20 minute nap if I have the luxury of a lunch break
- A fixed bedtime, despite the adjustment to the new schedule
- Limiting screen time an hour before bedtime
- Carving out at least one mental break during the workday
I’m treating sleep as a practical recovery and risk-management consideration rather than making a medical claim about how Ramadan affects cognition.
3. 🧘 Manage Stress and Cognitive Load
Deadlines are stressful no matter the time of year. Some things that help me in particular during Ramadan are:
Preferring async tools (Slack, Teams, Jira comments) over scheduling meetings when I’m feeling drained
Not getting sucked into disagreements in meetings, because the lower energy makes it easier to get sucked in
A quick breathing exercise before a big or draining meeting or task.
4. 💬 Communicate proactively in Agile/Remote Teams
Actually, this is the most valuable piece of practical advice in the whole post, and I should have put it first instead of burying it after the nutritional tips.
When working with cross-functional teams in an Agile framework during Ramadan, it’s critical to communicate your limitations to your peers/line managers/Scrum Masters upfront. After all, you are likely to be in constant communication with people who are not observing Ramadan and may not be aware of your condition.
- Asynchronous communication: Keep relevant stakeholders updated in a channel they can check when convenient, without requiring a call or video meeting during your fasting hours.
- Capacity planning: Talk to your PM/Scrum Lead about your likely availability before the sprint starts. If you’re going to be working fewer hours than the team normally does, factor that into your capacity planning and selection of work, rather than cutting your expectations quietly after the fact.
This ties in directly with the advice above about building sustainable working habits. The same principles apply to working in remote/Agile teams during Ramadan. If you want to expand on this topic, I’ve actually written a post about Developer Well-being: 4 Pillars of Sustained Engineering Excellence, which covers similar ground in more detail.
5. 🎯 Plan Important Work Around Your Energy and Schedule
Save your highest cognitive work for your actual high-focus windows (morning or post-Iftar) and not what your calendar currently dictates. A few supporting behaviors here:
Wherever possible, plan to collaborate with your teammates in a way that cognitively intensive work is undertaken when your attention is at its peak. It’s a resource allocation question, not an indictment of your character.
Automate as much as possible if you can, especially for repetitive tasks and tests, where you have limited working hours.
6. 🌙 Prepare Early for The Eid Holiday
Better spend your last working days before Eid tying up loose ends and not leaving it all to the end. If your sprint boundary falls in the last ten nights of Ramadan and a release is riding on it, it’s much less painful to raise the conflict with your PM early on than to discover it in the week of.
Balancing Work with Spiritual Priorities
Ramadan is not just a productivity challenge to get through. Muslim professionals also need to make room for fasting, worship, and introspection, as well as family commitments, which are all important beyond any impact on the workplace.
Practically, that might mean the Quran being on the dash of your car as you drive to work, or the Tarawih prayers waiting for you when you get home, or some other way of carving out a space for Islam in your day that isn’t an input into a productivity method. That’s the point for many of the people reading this for the month.
Practical Ramadan Productivity Checklist for Software Engineers
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Talk to your PM/Scrum Lead before Ramadan starts | Realistic velocity adjustment avoids mid-sprint surprises |
| Flag your actual availability windows to your team | Prevents meetings from eating into your low-energy hours |
| Default to async updates during low-energy windows | Maintains visibility without demanding real-time responsiveness |
| Block your highest-focus hours for your hardest tasks | Matches cognitive demand to actual energy, not the calendar |
| Document and close loose ends before Eid leave | Avoids a rushed, risky handoff |
| Check in on teammates who are fasting, not just yourself | Delivery risk is a team problem, not just an individual one |
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
How do I handle meetings during Ramadan if I’m fasting and my teammates are not?
Make sure to clearly communicate when your energy levels are likely to be lower, and use async updates where possible. Most people will be on board with this in theory; the issue is in practice.
Should I be taking vacation days during Ramadan?
If you have a release due in the last ten nights of Ramadan, a period of time which many Muslims hold as deeply sacred and important to spend with family, a conversation with your PM about pushing the date or taking a few vacation days is probably a more optimal allocation of resources than pushing through Ramadan.
How do I talk to my manager about reduced sprint capacity without it sounding like I’m asking for less work?
Frame it as a planning conversation rather than a request. If I were to ask my manager, “What should we plan for my capacity for the next few sprints?” It would probably sound less like I was asking for a reduction in workload than if I said, “Hey, I’ve been struggling to meet my sprint goals.”
Does fasting affect cognitive performance?
The relationship between fasting during Ramadan and changes in performance is more nuanced than many productivity articles suggest. The nuance is that it’s not that fasting universally improves or impairs performance; a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis of 222 effect sizes in 3,484 participants found no overall difference in cognitive performance between fasted and fed adults, although the authors do note reduced performance with increasing durations of fasting and individual differences in these effects. Bamberg & Moreau (2025), Psychological Bulletin.
Your Turn 💬
What’s the one adjustment that’s made the biggest difference for you managing delivery work during Ramadan? Drop a reply below; I read every one.
Sources
Bamberg, C., & Moreau, D. (2025). Acute effects of fasting on cognitive performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 151(9), 1147-1169.
