Note: Work in Progress

Agile implementations leverage the notion of a cadence all over the place. For example, we have Sprints with regularly scheduled meetings. Cadence really allows us to define events that occur regularly but also specify due dates when things are expected to get done. As a result of this, setting up a cadence offers a lot of benefits:

• The time box forces us to make decisions, and stops us from procratinating
• When working a project, cadence allow us to more easily synchronize activities - is it in this Sprint or the next Sprint
• When working a project, cadence allows us to pull things together and objectively see what we have done.
• Cadence, with a buffer allows, us to deal with uncertainty - we know what we are need to achieve and because we have a buffer, as we discover things or as we are impacted by others that effect our plan we can make adjustments.
• When working a meeting, it can save effort in setting up a meeting - we know we are going to meet every two weeks on this subject, so lets just set the time / agenda / etc up now.

“Teams using Kanban also value slack, and understand the impact that slack has on each team member’s ability to do their best work. This is one of the main reasons that they limit work in progress. And when teams use Kanban to improve the process, instead of following a strict timebox they will adopt a delivery cadence. To do this, they commit to delivering software on a regular schedule (for example, a team might commit to releasing software every six weeks) — but they don’t commit to a specific set of work items that will be included with the release. Instead, they trust their system to deliver work items. If they’ve removed overburdening and unevenness, then they will naturally get a set of completed work items to include in each delivery.” "Learning Agile: Understanding Scrum, XP, Lean, and Kanban" - Andrew Stellman, Jennifer Greene

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