Agile Glossary

Timebox

What is Timebox?

A timebox is a previously agreed period of time during which a person or a team works steadily towards the completion of some goal. Rather than allow work to continue until the goal is reached, and evaluate the time taken, the timebox approach consists of stopping work when the time limit is reached and evaluating what was accomplished.

Timeboxes can be used at varying time scales. The “Pomodoro technique” organizes personal work around 25-minute timeboxes. In a completely different domain “speed dating” is known for its seven-minute timeboxes. Time scales ranging from one day to several months have been used.

The critical rule of timeboxed work is that work should stop at the end of the timebox, and review progress: has the goal been met, or partially met if it included multiple tasks?

Origins

Timeboxed iterations are a distinctive feature of the early Agile approaches, notably Scrum and Extreme Programming, but they have an earlier history:

  • 1988: the “timebox” is described as a cornerstone of Scott Schultz’s “Rapid Iterative Production Prototyping” approach in use at a Du Pont spin-off, Information Engineering Associates
  • 1991: the details of the “timebox” are described at length in one chapter of James Martin’s “Rapid Application Development”
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Additional Agile Glossary Terms

An acceptance test is a formal description of the behavior of a software product, generally expressed as an example or a usage scenario. A number of different notations and approaches have been proposed for such examples or scenarios.
Test-driven development (TDD) is a style of programming where coding, testing, and design are tightly interwoven. Benefits include reduction in defect rates.
The team meets regularly to reflect on the most significant events that occurred since the previous such meeting, and identify opportunities for improvement.
A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.
An acceptance test is a formal description of the behavior of a software product, generally expressed as an example or a usage scenario. A number of different notations and approaches have been proposed for such examples or scenarios.
Test-driven development (TDD) is a style of programming where coding, testing, and design are tightly interwoven. Benefits include reduction in defect rates.
The team meets regularly to reflect on the most significant events that occurred since the previous such meeting, and identify opportunities for improvement.

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