Timebox
A fixed maximum period of time allocated to an activity, after which it ends regardless of the outcome.
What it means
Every Scrum event is a timebox: the Sprint itself, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective all have a maximum duration. Timeboxing manages complexity by limiting how long teams deliberate before acting.
Timeboxes can always end early if their purpose is achieved, but they should never run over. This discipline keeps meetings efficient and forces teams to make decisions with imperfect information rather than waiting for certainty.
Common mistakes
Timeboxing also applies outside formal events, for example limiting a spike or an experiment to a fixed window before reassessing.
Example
The Daily Scrum is capped at 15 minutes; unresolved topics are taken offline immediately afterward.