{"id":5003218,"date":"2015-12-16T22:42:47","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T06:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aadev22.local\/?post_type=aa_glossary&#038;p=5003218"},"modified":"2023-03-12T12:41:02","modified_gmt":"2023-03-12T19:41:02","slug":"iteration","status":"publish","type":"aa_glossary","link":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/glossary\/iteration\/","title":{"rendered":"Iteration"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>An iteration, in the context of an Agile project, is a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/glossary\/timebox\/\">timebox<\/a>\u00a0during which development takes place, the duration of which:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>may vary from project to project, usually between 1 and 4 weeks<\/li>\n<li>is in most cases fixed for the duration of a given project<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A key feature of Agile approaches is the underlying assumption that a project consists exclusively of a sequence of iterations, possibly with the exception of a very brief \u201cvision and planning\u201d phase prior to development, and a similarly brief \u201cclosure\u201d phase after it.<\/p>\n<p>In general, iterations are aligned with calendar weeks, often starting on Mondays and ending on Fridays; this is more a matter of convenience than an explicit recommendation and many teams adopt different conventions.<\/p>\n<p>The fixed length of iterations gives teams a simple way to obtain, based on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/guide.agilealliance.org\/guide\/velocity.html\">velocity<\/a>\u00a0and the amount of work remaining, a usually accurate (though not very precise) estimation of the project\u2019s remaining duration.<\/p>\n<h2>Also Known As<\/h2>\n<p>The\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/glossary\/scrum\/\">Scrum\u00a0<\/a>community has historically used the term \u201csprint\u201d, but the two are nowadays used interchangeably without any particular connotation attached to one or the other.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/glossary\/xp\">XP<\/a>\u00a0refers to iterations as \u201cweekly cycles\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Agile usage of the term \u201citeration\u201d as essentially synonymous with \u201ctimebox\u201d is a departure from the everyday meaning of \u201cthe act of repeating\u201d when used in an abstract sense and \u201cone repetition\u201d more concretely; it is that more usual meaning which is conveyed by the sense \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/guide.agilealliance.org\/guide\/iterative.html\">iterative<\/a>\u00a0development\u201d.<\/p>\n<h2>Origins<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>1991: RAD, possibly the first approach in which timeboxing and \u201citerations\u201d in the looser sense of \u201cone repetition of the entire software development process\u201d are closely combined, is described by James Martin in his \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/0023767758\">Rapid Application Development<\/a>\u201c<\/li>\n<li>1995: the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/summary?doi=10.1.1.86.4164\">earliest writings on Scrum<\/a>\u00a0introduce the notion of the \u201csprint\u201d as iteration, although its duration is variable<\/li>\n<li>1998: the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.xprogramming.com\/publications\/dc9810cs.pdf\">first writings on Extreme Programming<\/a>\u00a0describe fixed-length, three-week iterations and emphasize the advantage of this scheme in obtaining imprecise but accurate feedback on schedule performance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An iteration is a timebox during which development takes place. The  duration may vary from project to project and is usually fixed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6000331,"featured_media":8067461,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[908],"tags":[1043],"class_list":["post-5003218","aa_glossary","type-aa_glossary","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-process","tag-sprint-planning"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aa_glossary\/5003218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aa_glossary"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/aa_glossary"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6000331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5003218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/aa_glossary\/5003218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8067461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5003218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5003218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agilealliance.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5003218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}