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Slide 1: Time Boxing Antonio Terreno ThoughtWorks UK Away Day 23 June 2007 © ThoughtWorks, 2006

Slide 2: Agenda time boxing? • What is • Why? • How? • When? • Tools? © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 3: But first of all • Why are you attending here? © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 4: Ok, Timeboxing • Wikipedia says: – In Project management, a timebox is a period of time in which to accomplish some task. – The end date is set in stone and may not be changed. – If the team exceeds the date, the work is considered a failure and is cancelled or rescheduled. – Some timeboxes allow the team to adjust the scope of the task in order to meet the deadline. © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 5: But I am not a PM! • What if we think in the same way in the small? – Split a story in tasks – The end is still set in stone – If I exceed the time I cancel the activity or I reschedule it © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 6: Some history • Rick Mugridge wrote once upon a time (2003) a paper on micro iteration in XP • He wrote: – Micro-iterations are missing some explicit elements from the iteration level • Stories • The Planning Game to prioritize stories • Time boxing • And then: – For people learning to apply TDD, it may be useful to suggest time boxing of a few minutes to get them used to cycling quickly (Kent Beck) – Ron Jeffries reacted on the XP ML asking what if we always timebox micro iterations? © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 7: Ok maybe is not a bad idea to time box • I found it good with people not used to the TDD rhythm – The Delaney experiment • I found it good not only for this, I think that you can have value also as a skilled dev © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 8: How then • 30 min boxes • We have a task, we estimate how many slot to finish it. • If the task needs to many boxes, let’s split the task in sub tasks • After each slot we take a break – No complex activities – 5 min • After 4-5 slots a longer break • No interruptions at all during the box © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 9: Timebox Format • A post it or a story card • Task name, indeed • Slot estimation, how many slots in order to complete the task • Real number of slot used to complete the task • Keep it simple © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 10: Objectives • Tracking progress Estimation • Improve • Avoid Distractions – External – Internal Perfectionism • Avoid assimilation • Increase © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 11: Tracking progress • We we’ll have a fine grain tracking of what we are doing • A deep knowledge of what is blocking us • What is speeding up us • What can be improved in our process © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 12: Improve Estimation • We’ll have to estimate every morning • Typical day is – 8.30 allocate one box for planning and estimating – 9.00 start with the tasks of the day • Every day you will have to estimate what you can achieve everyday day – The biggest consequence is that you will have a better idea of the (in)famous ideal day • Allocate boxes for ANY task: email check, meetings, … • It’s easy to see then that a day with 16 boxes is impossible, that’s the ideal day, right? © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 13: Avoid distractions • The box is not interruptible – Team&pair communication of course is part of the task completion – Phone calls are not – Googleing is not (if needed to achieve the task will be timeboxed as well) – No email check • So external but also internal distractions © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 14: Avoid Perfectionism • Sometimes it happens… – Over design – Over engineered – Complex solutions • Allocating a concrete number of boxes for a story should prevent to spend to much time on not valuable tasks • A bunch of boxes can be always allocated for refactoring, design changes and so on, if needed • Avoid YAGNI © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 15: Assimilation • The break is for two main reasons – Assimilate what we just did, it looks like that human brain works well for 20 to 40 min, it takes a bit to serialize then all the infos (I/O is slower!) – Have a sustainable pace – RSI guys will be happy • The tube/bed solution, never happened to you? – Working hard during the whole day, blocked on some silly problem • Find the solution on the lift, in tube or in the pub – Lift tube pub depends on how much tired you were! © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 16: Consequences • Improved Effectiveness • Improved Productivity Focus • Improved • Improved Consciousness © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 17: Consequences • We are aware of time – Time in the end is a sequence of events • We can focus and prioritize the tasks that really mater – MoSCoW prioritizing, but finer grain, code level • It’s a good tool against procrastination • We know better what we did • What we accomplished and what not © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 18: It may be useful for… • Uninteresting, boring tasks – Well, I can do it, it’s just for 30 min! • Very good for rolling back tasks – Chosen a wrong solution – Allocated N boxes – Fail, rollback and choose another solution © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 19: When? • Dave Cheong uses Time Boxing even for Xmas gifts • As a Developer – Spiking a solution – Performance fixes – Every day coding – Estimations sessions – When working unpaired • As a Developer at home in order to tidy my flat • Spare time as well – Blogging – Googleling –… • Generally, doing activities © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 20: Tools • Someone uses a physical device such as a Kitchen Timer • There are few free timers online – It’s important that the tool will be simple – Delaney wrote Ntimer :) – I am trying to make it portable, it’s written in C# © ThoughtWorks, 2007

Slide 21: Open discussion … © ThoughtWorks, 2007