ome time ago I sat in on two iteration meetings for an adjacent team. There was a possibility that I would join the team on a part time basis, a possibility that never eventuated. The project they were working on was already quite far along. They claimed to be using eXtreme Programming, to be agile, and to follow two-week iterations. However:
- The team were not asked to commit to completing the tasks scheduled the iteration planning meeting.
- The instead of scheduling based on the historical progress of the team in previous iterations the capacity of the iteration is simply assumed to be 80 hours times the number of developers.
- Defects from failed acceptance tests were postponed until the end of the release, leading to a final “test and fix” phase.
- Rather than using rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration, all stories were assigned to specific iterations during the initial release planning phase.
- There was no closing ceremony for the iteration—no demonstration of completed functionality, no interim retrospective. Unfinished tasks were simply moved to the next iteration, and planning for the new one began immediately.
- There was no learning from one iteration to the next. Mistakes were repeated, and any lessons learned were quickly forgotten in the rush to complete tasks.
The point of time boxing is to
- Provide risk management
- Limit the time spent on any one task
- Habituate the team to meet deadlines.
- Avoid wasting time on sunk costs
None of these objectives were being met.
They were continually starting but never finishing
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