,
8 tweets,
3 min read
Read on Twitter
a quick thread about "sprints" (and #agile)
1) frequent integration (of ideas, code, expectations, perspectives, data, etc.) makes absolute sense. It works. There is an optimal tempo, and that point is lower than we intuit most of the time...
1) frequent integration (of ideas, code, expectations, perspectives, data, etc.) makes absolute sense. It works. There is an optimal tempo, and that point is lower than we intuit most of the time...
2) frequent integration will also, defacto, feel a little uncomfortable ... because *by design* it will expose disconfirming information, and will always feel a bit premature. Forcing functions are designed to make us pay attention... 
3) we have to contend with a limiter...and that is our ability to actually make use of/process the information that the forcing function elicits. A long time-box will yield so much information, that it will be difficult to make full use of the information
4) on the flip-side, a super short time-box may be have impossibly high transaction costs, and may produce too little information to be valuable. Our intuition sets this length higher than is optimal. So it is a dance.
5) the tragedy is that something with the potential to be healthy, to catalyze learning, to de-risk, to make products better...is so frequently abused. The concept of "sprint" as a "mini fixed length project" is taken to morbid extremes. We've replaced waterfalls with whirlpools
6) I hear "but what if it doesn't fit into a sprint?" all the time. To me it is a curious question because it seems so obvious to me: "hey, let's try to keep the spirit of time-boxing in mind. How can we integrate and learn something?"
A:"because I am worried we'll ship crap..."
A:"because I am worried we'll ship crap..."
9) sounds like someone is missing the point, and misinterprets the "job" we hire time-boxes (or other forcing functions if you're not using sprints) to do.
If a team is just ticking off sprints/stories sprint after sprint and never learning/testing...then something is wrong
If a team is just ticking off sprints/stories sprint after sprint and never learning/testing...then something is wrong
10) I'll end with...have a conversation with your team to understand the Why of time-boxes. Respect the needs of others. See them as a healthy forcing function -- something the team invites into their work -- not as a cat-herding device.
