Beyond Legacy Code

Cadence Dictates Process

In “How Cadence Predicts Process,”^[29] Mary Poppendieck discussed how the rhythm of release cycles affects the efficiency of your system. She used the example of a six-month release cycle. If you spend six months in a release cycle you’re probably going to spend the first month at least on requirements, identifying what it is we need to build. So we’re doing that instead of coding. We’re probably going to be spending—and this is almost universally true—the last two months, a third of our time, on testing and integration.

This means that more than half of a software developer’s time is spent not writing software.

Say you’ve built twenty-five features in one six-month release cycle, essentially a feature a week. Assuming ...