Our cadence

Please see Drumbeat to understand our cadence in more depth. Product development in a nutshell:

• 4 quarters per year
• 2 cycles per quarter (6-week and 7-week, alternating)
• Each cycle is comprised of 5 weeks of project work and 1 week of cooldown work
• The quarterly 7th week is reserved for a hackathon

The weekly cadence:

• Monday standup
• Thursday value stream reporting
• Friday show & tell and dev retro

Inside the cycle

The 5-week cycle is either comprised of one LARGE project or two SMALL projects. Each project is owned by a single-threaded DRI who serves as project lead (more on the rotating project lead below). The project lead helps to guide the shaping process, is DRI for all communication, scope-hammering, value-slicing, and delivery of the project.

The 6th week is a cooldown week, where all high priority tickets are cleaned up, tech debt can be addressed, and additional small tasks that fall outside project scope can be completed.

The alternating 7th week is a cooldown and hackathon week. The goal is to keep triage clean while spending 3+ days in “hack” mode working on something fun and vitalizing to the team. It’s our quarterly week of engineering-focused initiatives.

Rotating project leads

We made the decision to have rotating project leads for cycle work. The rest of the team should make sure the project lead has no other major responsibilities during the implementation weeks of the cycle. There is also likely some small shaping work expected of the project lead prior to implementation, as determined by product management.

Expectations for the project lead

Phase: Framing and shaping

• Support product management in framing or shaping activities, as requested by product management. During these phases, product management is DRI, while engineering is in a supporting role