Re: Practice: Weekly Cycle

On Nov 24, 2004, at 8:22 PM, mfeathers-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
wrote:

>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Wake <william.wake-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> All -
> When you have two-week iterations, I'm curious what that means:
> - do you have twice as many stories "in process"?
> - is your typical story unable to be completed in a single week?
> - or is a story the "usual" :) size, but you have "wait time" within 
> it?
> - do you tie releases to the iteration length at all?
> - ... (the other 20 reasons I'm not clever enough to make up here)
>
> I'm curious about the question behind all of this.  What problem are 
> we trying to solve?  I know Scrum teams that have four week sprints 
> and they work fine for them.  Teams I work with tend to have 2 week 
> iterations.   There are two reasons why I occasionally  try 1 week 
> iterations: 1) to develop more practice discipline, and help people 
> learn how to work in smaller increments,  2) to give the customer more 
> control.  But, generally these are not long term concerns.
>
> I do see the benefit of shorter iterations, but to me it should be 
> tied to a concrete problem.  Otherwise, aren't we optimizing something 
> that may not need to be optimized?

It's a feedback issue.  How a quickly do you want or need your feedback 
to (a)
stay on track and (b) identify your velocity.  I like the iteration to 
end before I
go off the road, preferably before I hit the rumble strip or the gravel.

One week iterations are nice, because they are on a natural human 
cycle.  Monthly
iterations are nice because they are also on a natural human  cycle.
I've used bi-monthly iterations a lot and they have also seemed to work 
well.

SIze of project also matters ... bigger projects seem to migrate 
towards longer iterations.

----
John Goodsen                 RADSoft / Better Software Faster
jgoodsen-Ft5HhTtJyqRBDgjK7y7TUQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx            Extreme Programmer 
and Coach
http://www.radsoft.com          Enterprise Java and .NET Solutions



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