Being Agile: Eleven Breakthrough Techniques to Keep You from “Waterfalling Backward”

Short Iterations

Short iterations help teams learn quickly how to get to “Done!” every iteration. We believe that iterations should never exceed 2 weeks in length, no matter the circumstances. This assertion causes alarm bells to go off for many teams. Team members know how to break down their own work into small chunks, but the trick is understanding how to break down functionality in such a way that the whole team can focus on completing all aspects of development for a given user story within an iteration. For waterfall teams, this is always a tough concept to put into practice: Developers have historically worried only about coding, testers only about testing, and writers only about writing. Getting all disciplines working together to achieve ...