Wednesday, August 09, 2006
The value of time boxing
Our internal IT department has recently started splitting iterations of customer-valued work in boxes of a couple of weeks instead of using a full-blown waterfall methodology.
Under the old model, the customer received dates commitments and estimates of work. However, priorities changed quickly and the team needed to spend more time re-estimating and keeping the documentation uptodate than producing the software the customer actually valued. As a result, the development team was rarely able to deliver on useful software on time, and had to spend even more time communicating the delays. A vicious circle ensued. When software was eventually delivered, the business had moved on and the requirements were out of date (despite being signed off).
Now, the customer gets regular supplies of fresh software. The software is guaranteed fresh because requirements are only analysed in much detail at all for the next iteration. He knows that his latest priorities will be pretty quickly converted into working software every couple of weeks. He also sees something like a cumulative flow diagram showing a steady stream of working features being delivered to him. His need for time and date planning, for estimations and documentation goes down.
Under the old model, the customer received dates commitments and estimates of work. However, priorities changed quickly and the team needed to spend more time re-estimating and keeping the documentation uptodate than producing the software the customer actually valued. As a result, the development team was rarely able to deliver on useful software on time, and had to spend even more time communicating the delays. A vicious circle ensued. When software was eventually delivered, the business had moved on and the requirements were out of date (despite being signed off).
Now, the customer gets regular supplies of fresh software. The software is guaranteed fresh because requirements are only analysed in much detail at all for the next iteration. He knows that his latest priorities will be pretty quickly converted into working software every couple of weeks. He also sees something like a cumulative flow diagram showing a steady stream of working features being delivered to him. His need for time and date planning, for estimations and documentation goes down.
