RE: Practice: Weekly Cycle

Restating the obvious - a simple posting of stories for the iteration
and a gas gauge showing progress provides many teams a view that can be
discussed during the standup and determine some answer to "are we half
done." How does a team using a one week iteration know they are half
done the middle of the day Wednesday?

I coach all teams using two week iterations to discuss the "half done"
issue at the end of week one. This discussion sometimes causes the team
to move toward one week iterations.

Struggles I have had with one week iterations have to do with developer
skills (not able to find a groove until the iteration it almost over)
and customers frustrated with what they often call "unnatural" story
telling and writing (e.g. the customer starts telling a story only to
have the developers say that that amount of work cannot be accomplished
in one week).

I dig the strong focus and immediacy associated with shorter iterations,
but I think the cycle time must fit for the entire community, not just
the developers.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kent Beck [mailto:kentb-ihVZJaRskl1bRRN4PJnoQQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 11:04 AM
To: xpbookdiscussiongroup-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: [xpe2e] Practice: Weekly Cycle


The problems to be solved are:
  * Having a sense of progress
  * Having an accurate measure of progress
  * Delivering efficiently
  * Tracking changing needs
  * Building a trust-based relationship inside and outside the team
  * Enabling the team to offer accountability

One of my principles is working with human nature, including natural
time
cycles. One week and one month are common cycles. That's why I'm
suspicious
of two-week iterations--fortnights aren't nearly as widely used as
either
weeks or months.

I have a question for those using two week iterations. After the first
week,
how do you know if you are half done? Is this even an interesting
question?

Kent Beck
Three Rivers Institute

-----Original Message-----
From: mfeathers-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:mfeathers-mn4gwa5WIIQysxA8WJXlww@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 24, 2004 8:23 PM
To: xpbookdiscussiongroup-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
xpbookdiscussiongroup-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [xpe2e] Practice: Weekly Cycle




-----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?


Michael Feathers
http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.MichaelFeathers.TheNewGuy









 
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