As we noticed in Uncertainty Principle in Software Projects, to deliver the whole project in time we need periodically show to the customer the features as soon as the prototype for them is ready. The question is, how long should be the period?
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To be more precise we are going to estimate the period for the minimal production unit (team) that usually holds 7 to 10 people.
Naturally, for the customer the sooner we make the new set of the features the better. However, judging from the fact that the projects in average finishes about six month after the deadline, after six month the customer patience is totally exhausted. Therefore the period should be much smaller and since the nearest smaller human scale period is month, we may assume that after the month of our silence the customer probably will become worry about the project state.
On the other hand, to be sure that the most (say 90%) of the tasks will be ready to the time of the next iteration, according to the statistics we need about 100 tasks, and if the task lasts at least one day, for the team of ten people it takes more that the week to be ready.
We in fact have justified the suggested time of the “sprint” in scrum project management method, which suggests the period between one month and two weeks.
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