During development, multicellular organisms undergo stereotypical patterns of tissue growth in space and time, but how this is orchestrated remains unclear. Drosophila histoblast nests are small clusters of progenitor epithelial cells that undergo extensive proliferation to give rise to the abdominal epidermis and are amenable to live-imaging. Taking advantage of the recent development of analytical tools that capture cell and tissue deformations, we performed a quantitative analysis of the temporal dynamics of abdomen growth. I will present our latest work on how precisely timed transitions in proliferative behaviour define the developmental growth of our model tissue.