Project development. Iteration is a way to improve the process

Iteration is an established time period within the project, during which a stable working version of the product is produced. Attached are installation scripts, accompanying documentation, other artifacts, which are necessary for the application of this release.

Brief information

A working version of the product allows to show interested persons the actual development of the project. During the demonstration, the development team can get feedback on what needs to be done to better understand the needs and ways to implement them. The subsequent iteration is performed on the basis of the previous one. The product obtained as a result is one stage closer to the final one. Iteration is a limited period. In other words, the schedule is rigidly fixed. In order to meet this schedule, filling the time interval may change.

Features

Iteration is a clearly regulated period. The development of the project has carefully planned goals, the length of the time period is fixed. When regulating for each iteration set their own evaluation criteria. At the same time, responsibilities and tasks are clearly distributed among the participants involved in the project. In addition, a study of objective indicators of project development is carried out. Iteration is a period that involves a certain number of alterations. It should be said that they are all implemented in a structured way.

Integration

Any simple iteration should take into account the likely risks that are of importance to the project, and also implement high-priority components of the work. As a result, there is a certainty that at each period a maximum of value for stakeholders is added against the background of a reduction in uncertainty. Usually iterative development is combined with continuous or frequent integration. In other words, from the moment when components become satisfactory by the results of unit tests, they are integrated into the overall project. After assembly and testing are carried out. Thus, the capabilities of integrated products over the iteration increase with respect to the goals that were identified during the planning. Regular assemblies (everyday or more frequent) allow you to separate the problems and tasks of integration and testing, distribute them evenly throughout the development cycle. Often the reason for the collapse of projects is that all the difficulties are discovered at one point within the framework of one integration process that is taking place at the final stage. In this case, because of the only problem, the whole team stops.

Prospects

Due to the complexity of the software used today, it is not always possible to consistently design, define requirements, test, implement, choose architecture, perform these and other steps correctly. The solution by iteration method allows, at the end of each period, to give interested persons access to the project possibilities. In this case, the team quickly and periodically receives feedback. They, in turn, allow to make improvements and solve problems at a lower cost in case of putting them into the temporary and budgetary framework of the project and long before the development goes far enough that major changes may be required. Iteration allows you to get the current code. It can be activated, evaluated and corrected for the direction of project development. Typically, the duration of the period is four weeks. However, there are teams that work for seven days or longer - up to a month and a half.