In software development, time is the new framework
An interview with TOSD co-creator Sebastian Kubsch about time-orientation and how a better understanding of time as a resource is revolutionizing software development and tech
The interview was conducted by Katharina Mottyll
Sebastian, you are CTO of Pradtke GmbH and, together with Niels Pflaeging, you recently “invented” the TOSD development process. What is behind Time-Oriented Software Development?
: TOSD is a radically new approach to software development that considers time to be the central resource—not in the sense of deadlines or phases, but as an integral part of collaboration, of planning and conducting the work. Instead of traditional project plans or sprint cycles, we focus on consistent time-orientation that takes into account the natural rhythm of the work, of teams and organizations. This leads to greater clarity, less overhead, and significantly higher adaptability.How did the collaboration with
and the development of TOSD come about?Since its foundation, Pradtke made a journey that will seem familiar to most software firms: We accumulated growing technical debt and heaps of legacy code of which no-one knows what it does, living out not-invented-here syndrome while trying to balance long-term architectural goals against short-term client needs. We were juggling our supposedly ‘limited‘ developer resources in the hope of getting the most out of them. On the way, we tried stuff like waterfall, Scrum, JIRA, estimations and OKRs – approaches that at no point did for us what we hoped they would do. We weren’t getting faster and the software didn’t get much better. With hindsight, that’s because we didn’t really understand what the underlying problems were. We hoped we could ‘fix‘ problems if we just threw the right processes, frameworks and models at them.
Niels and I got to know each other in the summer of 2024, during the Beta transformation we undertook at Pradtke. Niels and I both share a passion for decentralized, agile forms of organizing. During many conversations, we realized that classic software processes – even so-called agile approaches to software development – don’t sit well with today’s dynamic markets and companies.
In August 2025, Niels Pflaeging approached us with an alternative: Time-orientation. It sounded simple. Do away with all the cadence-based nonsense. Drop the idea of sprints. Throw out unnecessary roles, like Product Owner and Scrum Master. And, above all: stop trying to create flow by altering delivery times. Instead, we would fix delivery times and let capacity swing. The moment Niels discussed his proposition with me and one of our general managers, I was hooked. Hooked and left wondering: Could it be that simple to get to flow, after all?
“Do away with all the cadence-based nonsense. Drop the idea of sprints.
Throw out unnecessary roles, like Product Owner and Scrum Master.
And, above all: stop trying to create flow by altering delivery times.”
Based on these insights, Niels and I developed TOSD as a response to the challenges we had experienced in our company. Reflecting about our own reality at Pradtke and the common agile approaches, we noticed that none of those methods were time-oriented, punctual, fast, or actually creating flow and learning. Fleshing out TOSD, then, was an intensive process of discussion that interwove theory and practice. Always with time-orientation in mind.
As CTO at Pradtke, you are the very first person to have introduced TOSD. How did the adoption of time-orientation go and what do you think were the biggest lessons you learned?
The introduction of TOSD in our company was a straightforward, but exciting process. We didn’t “roll out” time-orientation, but sat down with our developers to specify how time-orientation would work out, adapting the previously developed concepts to our needs, at the same time. The discourse-based approach of introducing TOSD helped enormously in creating high acceptance among our teams, and achieving real impact quickly. For a software company like ours
that has existed since the 1990s, the challenge was getting rid of three decades of bad habits in four weeks.
I was particularly impressed by how quickly internal communication among developers improved: fewer meetings, less waiting, clearer decisions, more focus. Interestingly, the speed of development increased dramatically right away. A key lesson for me is that when you confide in people and make them aware of time as a creative tool, great results will follow.
With the experience of the last months, is there something you find particularly compelling about TOSD, compared to the old ways of working in software development – agile or not?
Authorization is a key aspect of time-orientation. People were used to wait for legitimation before taking action. That made things slow. With TOSD, we made it very clear from the beginning that everyone was authorized to take action, because we trust them, because we knew they would do things well. And then they did. Because they wanted to, not because of some kind of command. In TOSD, to delay a conversation about a problem that we just encountered would be frivolous and absurd. That’s a big change, compared to everything we did before.
Once you had adopted the approach, what made you certain that TOSD actually worked, in practice?
By week three, a veteran developer approached me. He told me how happy he was with the new model: That finally things had started to move again, that he was relieved we were finally working on items we had been talking about for years, but hadn’t tackled before. He showed me a feature he had just finalized, and that he was visibly proud of. I knew then that we were on the right track.
Are there tangible benefits has TOSD has already brought to your customers?
Our customers benefit directly from our faster response times and better quality of our software. Time-orientation allows us to respond quickly to new requirements – without rushing. This creates trust and enables partnership-based collaboration on an equal footing.
What’s next for TOSD – internally at Pradtke and beyond?
At Pradtke, we are continuously developing TOSD further, together with our developers. We are still learning more about time-orientation every day, every week. At the same time, we are making the approach accessible to other organizations around the world – through a portfolio of services, public speaking, and maybe even a book, at some point. But first things first: It’s this week that we are publishing the BetaCodex Network research paper on TOSD that outlines the approach in detail. At the same time, TOSD is becoming free to use under an open source license from Creative Commons. We are also in the process of organizing the 1st Bochum Conference on Time-Oriented Software Development, which will happen on 26 February 2026, here at our offices.
At the same time, we are working on forming an international team around TOSD and on winning over more teams and organizations to time-orientation. We have already succeeded to get a few associates on board: Andreas Schlegel from Baden-Württemberg and Ernesto Corona from Argentina. So the TOSD approach is going international coming to South America very soon, probably through a separate conference in Buenos Aires, during the first half of 2026.
A lot is going on around time-orientation – and it’s incredibly fun.
What advice would you give to other CTOs, or software managers who might be interested in TOSD?
My advice is simple: Think again about time. Don’t see it as an enemy, but as an ally in the quest for innovation and effectiveness. Flow is not illusive. What’s great about TOSD is that it isn’t a rigid, technocratic framework, but an approach that adapts to the reality of work and value creation. In a way, time itself is the new framework. We just need to make good use of it. Which explains why time-orientation immediately removes all kinds of problems around control, work organization, quality, and cost – or at least makes those problems solvable and manageable.
Those who are willing to let go of the usual illusion of predictability and controllability and place their trust in developers will be surprised at how much potential their own development teams have.
Further reading
Read the brand new BetaCodex Network research paper No. 26 Introducing Time-Oriented Software Development by Niels Pflaeging and Sebastian Kubsch
For more about Time-Oriented Software Development visit the TOSD web page timeoriented.dev
Cross-industry expertise on time-oriented work is finally becoming accessible to software development. Long overdue! It’s only natural that TOSD embraces the open-source principle. Congratulations – and the first conferences are coming in 2026.