Re: Practice: Weekly Cycle

Kent,
Two week iterations has worked as a good pace for my teams.
One reasons might be that there, in my part of the world., is always monday
morning meetings anyway with the rest of the company.
The weekly pace is part of human nature.
A team that has no "social synchronization points" outside the team would
probably experience two-week iterations as a desert walk.
But when I suggest weekly iterations in my context, most people get a hunted
expression in their eyes.
I guess iterations should not be so short that people feel fragmented.
Depending on context and organizational overhead, the mental "fragmentation
limit" might be 1,2 or 4 weeks.

Another thing that we should recognize is that the available tools support
productivity in shorter iterations much better today than 5 years ago.
The general availability of no-cost or low-cost tools for refactoring,
test-driven development and continous integration makes a difference.

However, I encourage all the customers on the team , internal as well as
external, to be present at each planning game.
When some of the customers are out there travelling and scouting for the
team, it is more human to call them back to the home base every two weeks
rather than every week.

However, to clarify how we avoid making two week iterations static:
* My teams do not practice big upfront signup of tasks to individuals.
   The next available person takes the next task card and invites someone to
pair.
   The group figures out how to get the experienced people available as pair
partners.
   We apply Mary Poppendiecks "Measusure Up"-principle on the team.
   We do not measure on indviduals.
   And we save several team-hours on each iteration by not playing the
signup game.
* A completed iteration is not defined as a completed brundown chart (as it
is in SCRUM)
* A completed iteration is defined as the customers on team not being
surprised or disappointed
by what they see at the release & demo preceding the next planning game.

/Erik
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kent Beck" <kentb-ihVZJaRskl1bRRN4PJnoQQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <xpbookdiscussiongroup-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 6:04 PM
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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