Micro Timeboxing for Uncertainty
Timeboxing has long been a technique used by project managers to get results faster. I’ve never been a huge fan of heavy process or formal…
Timeboxing has long been a technique used by project managers to get results faster. I’ve never been a huge fan of heavy process or formal project management lessons, but there’s one really cool use for timeboxing that I’ve taken advantage of lately and that I’ve seen members of teams use very effectively the past year: I’ll call it micro timeboxing for uncertainty.
Whereas a traditional model might say, “the product gets shipped in two weeks no matter what,” and uses that constraint to drive tighter decisionmaking, this model looks closely at moments of uncertainty. You’re writing code and encounter a new problem, for example, you’d like to implement a new mechanism for accepting payments, and it has a few key advantages, but you’re not sure how long it will take: enter the micro timebox. Give yourself two hours with a stopwatch and see how far you can get. Then reflect on what you learned. It’s going to be a lot easier to know if it’s worthwhile with that new data. Compare this to the normal workflow which is to end up in the rabbit hole for a week only to realize later that the existing payment model is good enough and your new one still doesn’t work.
Another application I like is for explicitly non-coding tasks or others where “done” or an increment of progress is harder to discern. I find that micro timeboxing some of these tasks/projects can help unstick progress. For example, generally when I have a hairy target like “Write a chapter on XX,” I prefer to break it into components. For example, “research how A leads to B, then write two paragraphs on it,” but sometimes this can really break the artistic flow. But failing to decompose it can also lead to heavy procrastination because each time you see “write a chapter” on your to-do list you conclude that you don’t have enough time. In this case, I’ll modify the task to something like “[90 mins] Write a chapter on XX,” which is to say all I need to do is find a 90-minute block and then I will write as much as I possibly can in the chapter during that time. This keeps progress moving forward, doesn’t impact the creativity itself, and prevents procrastination.
// originally posted January 26, 2018 on prior blog //