Time constraints force better decisions

This is not an estimate of time, it's an appetite, which is a radically different approach. An estimate is like how long do we think it's going to take? We instead have appetites. Our appetite for any individual feature is no more than six weeks. Essentially that's our budget we're willing to spend.

Work expands to fill the time available. So for us it's about appetite.

Instead of making the estimate an output of planning, you make the time box or an appetite the input, and you say, 'We want to solve X problem and we're willing to invest six weeks solving that problem.'

So the cycles is just a way to say that for the next week or the next two weeks or whatever timeframe, we are going to work on these things and these other things we think are the priority or the focus for this timeframe. And then the team can try to focus on those things.

Pick a reasonable sounding appetite and just explore the two to three options around it. Pick six weeks, and then say, 'What would we do differently if we only had four weeks or eight weeks?' And you'll kind of naturally find the efficient frontier of cost and impact.