FifteenMinuteTimeBoxes

Argue about the test

In early incarnations of PairProgramming we found it useful to try [Wiki.ArguingThroughUnitTests] - and this works quite well. However we noticed that its too easy to argue for long periods and still get nothing done. Similarly, we noticed that other times we got into trouble when we were too gung-ho and worked for several hours without running any tests. This usually led to problems that required some fire fighting to get ourselves back on track.

15 minutes

To avoid either situation ( long code sessions or fire-fighting ) we reasoned that maybe DoingTheSimplestThing is doing what you can get done in 15 minutes (and we picked a controversial number to remind ourselves that XP is about rolling your sleeves up and doing something and getting a test running). We have tried this technique for several months, and have been very pleased with it - you can do useful things in short time spans.

Small hops

Importantly - the intent of this technique is to take a number of small hops to get where you ultimately want to go. There is a Wiki quiote somewhere where Ward or Ron talks about how they took a week or two working split stream to try an idea and then had to integrate it back in. They said it was nightmare, and in future they would always do it in small hops (if someone can find this quote, I would like to put it in here) -- TimM