Re: Practice: Weekly Cycle

On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 05:05:12PM +0000, Steve Freeman wrote:
> 
> Ron Jeffries wrote:
> > I, too, favor weekly iterations. However, I have recently had teems,
> > having tried one-week iterations, go to two weeks. I believe this was due
> > to the fact that they were in a legacy situation and the medium was too
> > sticky to get much done in a week. If I were doing it, I'd push to get back
> > to a week, but I'd support the stretching to two weeks given where they
> > currently found themselves.
> 
> I've had this pattern. We had a legacy codebase and one-week iterations 
> were just too tight. We compromised on having major/minor weeks: a two 
> week iteration with some coordination on the off week. Had the project 
> lasted we would have pushed up the rate.

I also have this pattern in a different context. When one's project and team is 
but one in a whole set of projects and project teams that have to be 
coordinated together, and when all the other project teams aren't doing 
"iterative" (mcu less XP) and/or aren't doing releases that are <= 1month, then 
trying to get one's own team and project to do weekly iterations was getting 
too difficult because there was too much friction in coordinating with the 
other projects/teams that simply couldn't deal with us moving that fast. We 
needed the extra week not only for additional planning and interfacing but also 
to give them (and the customers) something much more stable to use/evaluate for 
at least 2-3 days.

So we took a vote between (#1) going to 2 weeks for our iterations, or (#2) 
somehow making all the other projects and teams go "agile". We all preferred 
option #2, but agreed that option #1 was more within our sphere of influence 
(at least for the current project). Some of us ALSO set out on the longer-term 
goal of getting the others to go agile :-)

-- 
Brad Appleton <brad-777BKhlmzsrR7s880joybQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> www.bradapp.net
  Software CM Patterns (www.scmpatterns.com)
   Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration
"And miles to go before I sleep." -- Robert Frost


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