Time boxing: why does it matter?!

Do you know something about Goldratt, Parkinson and Steel ? Have you ever heard about effectiveness?

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When I was a student, as many others, I was affected by a strange syndrome that didn’t let me be completely focused on my exams. It happened, in fact, that even if the exams were scheduled in five or six weeks, my mind resisted in letting me apply to start study since the very first days available.
So it usually happened that I found my self completely commited to study only in the last few days, nights included.

This was a such a bad habit because the day of the exam I was completely exhausted, not lucid, neither sharp and concentrated, not able to exploit my communication skills that many times helped in ciritcal situations, letting me to get out from the corner, face the situation and finding answers to what the teacher was asking for.

Unfortunately this behavior in procrastinate every commitment, is something is written in our DNA of human beings. Everytime we have a task, our brain automatically search for a deadline, the last moment within which we will be able to perform such a task. Do you know the student syndrome (Goldratt)?

As you know, this behavior is a bad one because of two main factors: under and over estimations.

1. Not always we are so good in estimations. It could happen that the last moment we choose when to apply to such a task, is not the right one, because of underestimation. This led us to a sure delay.

2. Because of the the previous point and the past experiences in bad estimations, we continue to calculate the deadline as above reported, but we automatically overestimate adding additional days or weeks, hence adding waste, to waste.

We, as humans, tend to use the entire time allocated for a task, even if it was overestimated (Parkinsons’s law).

To face to such disfunctionalities, mr Steel studied the pehnomena and produce an equation that follows:

This equation states that the less the time we have to execute a task, the less the distractions we encounter, the higher the commitment, the higher the value we deliver.

Hence, this is why agile, SCRUM more precisely, define time-boxing and rithms for virtually everything.

It prescribes exact durations for meetings: in one month iteration we have 8 hrs for the planning meeting, 15 mins for the daily meeting, 4 hrs for the demo and three hours for the retrospective.

We have daily, weekly, monthly rythms.

These few rules, helps the team to remain focused and committed to the work they must perform.

A burndown chart to help you to study

Do you need a an easy tool to help you schedule, monitor and eventually replan your study progress?

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In September 2011 I participated in the ALE-Agile Lean Europe 2011 un-Conference in Berlin.
Many sessions were delivered (most of them were really very interesting) and I tried to attend to most of them. One the most fun and gorgeous, has been held by an agile coach (I do not remember his name…) and he explained how he used some agile principles and techniques to help his son to study and do the homework during the summer vacations.

One of the thing he explained was that his son had some books to read and the total numer of the pages were really a big number. He knew that one of the main problem with students, is the famous syndrome that Goldratt invented. In order to avoid any problem with such a syndrome, he decided to use a burndown chart to help the son keep focused, seeing the progress in term of page read and how many were still to be read.

He also created three different trend lines representing the paces (in SCRUM “velocity”): low, sustainable, high, every trend counting for a predefined number of page that would be read daily (e.g. low 10, sustainable 17, high 25).
This last improvement helped primarily to forecast for the finish date the son would have hit in case of different velocity and, furthermore, when he started to study he had an immediate and easy way to compare his progress against these trend lines.

Actually, I used this suggestion when studying for the PMI-ACP certification. Infact, I had to study several books in few months (hundreds of pages) and I would be sure to finish within february 2012.

One of the most valuable effect of using the burndown chart to help you study, is the psychological one: your progress is continuosly and pitilessly compared to the reference velocities and it helps to remain focused and to recover in case of delay.

Here it is a great anti-pattern to the Goldratt’s students syndrome!

Risks?!? TimeBox them!

Do you know why one of the pillar of  SCRUM is the time-boxing technique? Do you know the parkinson’s law or the student syndrome?

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As you probably know, SCRUM uses the timeboxing technique to limit the time necessary for “everything”.

The meetings for example:

• Planning (aka kick-off): 8 hrs
• Daily (aka review): 15 mins
• Demo (aka phase gate): 4 hrs
• Retrospective (aka CPI – continuous process improvement meeting) : 3 hrs

The most important thing that SCRUM timeboxes, however, is the Sprint.

A predefined time (usually 2/4 weeks) used by the team, to implement the system/product/service, achieving part of the project objectives (those with the highest priority in that moment).

Within the sprint, indeed, all the meetings above reported are instantiated as already described here.

Why SCRUM locks in such a strong way the project timings?

Oh, maybe because the founders (Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber) and the communities that developed the framework, known very well the parkinson’s law and the student syndrome!

The law of Parkinson cites “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“. How many times do you verify that even if a project is ahead of schedule, the earned value remained 99% till the end planned?

What Parkinson wrote, is, again, totally confirmed by the student syndrome. It, infact, refers to the phenomenon that many people will start to fully apply themselves to a task just at the last possible moment before a deadline.

This is what the most part of students tend to do, me included, studying for an exam just few days before attending to it. Even if this will restrict them to study also every nights till the exam itself.

When instead the time is limited and the things to do are defined and well understood (even if avoiding an excessive grade of details), the people involved feel that like a challenge, a moment to test themselves, their expertise, the way how they collaborate and solve emerging problems.  A big chance for personal and professional growth.

The high grade of commitment aforementioned and the prioritizing approach in selecting the things to do, aim to two main advanteges:

• Realising faster the most valuable functionalities that the customer needs for its business
• Drastically lowering of the risks

Regarding this last point, having a short feedback cycle between the team and the customer thanks to limited duration of the sprint, helps the stakeholders involved to understand if any type of  adjustment is necessary. This, furthermore, arise  early during the project life cycle.

Finally, the risk is lowered also because the product owner should prioritize the product backlog, keeping as the most important features, those who have the major risk rate.

Stay tuned!