Beyond Legacy Code

Chapter 6Practice 2: Build in Small Batches

The Scrum practice of time boxing forces developers to break down big features into smaller tasks, and though this may sound simple, it can be a challenge to implement. Accustomed to trying to build several features at once and focusing on the release instead of the feature or tasks, developers can end up overwhelmed, behind, and in a rush to finish.

Filmmakers don’t make a whole movie in one two-hour take; they shoot it not even, necessarily, a scene at a time but a shot at a time. When they have that shot, only then do they move on to the next. Though a director will always be keeping an eye on the movie as a whole, all efforts that day—or that part of a day—are on getting that one shot.

There are ...