XP Practice: Quarterly Cycle

January 11, 2008 by Artem Marchenko

Extreme programming weekly cycle is an efficient tool against over-planning that allows for focusing on implementing the top priority stories and getting the user feedback as soon as possible. While it is indeed important to deliver in small chunks of the high priority functionality, permanent work on the low level of detail can lead to the sub-optimization, when you might be polishing the already good enough product while loosing the opportunity to recognize the need for the completely new feature.

Quarterly cycle is no more, than a recommendation to have the regular reviews of the high level system structure, its goals and priorities - quarter just makes a natural period that matches many enterprises' financial period, is clearly big enough not to be buried with the current issues and is small enough for the quarter planning meetings to remain forums on something that can actually be implemented relatively soon. Quarterly cycle is also a recommendation to reflect on the team practices, relations and feelings at least once a quarter. For example, quarterly discussion might be a good moment for discussing the need to try some completely new approach to testing or version control.

This page is a part of the Extreme Programming overview

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