Incremental and Iterative Development

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Megan Brown

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Apr 1, 2008, 8:30:04 AM4/1/08

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Better Software Magazine: April 2008 Feature Article

By Alistair Cockburn

People still get wrapped around the axle trying to understand the difference between incremental and iterative development. The Unified Process authors in the 1990s didn’t help by indiscriminately calling everything iterative development. The two are different and must be managed differently. Successful teams do both at the same time, usually without thinking about it. Then someone starts thinking about it and does one without the other. Bad news follows.

Current agile practice doesn't seem to make it important that the users get to see what’s being built and have a chance to change it. Iteration lengths are so short that the programmers barely have time to program up the basics before the end of the iteration, so there's no time for the users to show up and say, "No, that’s not actually what I want."

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