The Iterative Method of Development

I got emailed this link following my talk in Brighton – and it’s an interesting one Hat-tip to Uwe for that).  It outlines a number of methods for development.  One of those is the Iterative Model:

Smaller teams have learned to maximize their learning opportunities by building lots of opportunity for rapid feedback into their process. The agile software development movement is the poster child here, but many of the same lessons are found throughout lean manufacturing, kaizen and other successful practices used by product development companies across a broad spectrum of industries.

The common metaphor is that of driving a car as opposed to launching a rocket. At every possible opportunity, you are looking ahead and adjusting the team’s trajectory in order to steer towards. Each change may seem subtle, but due to all the rapid cumulative adjustments, the team hone in on their targets quite efficiently.

It ends up being okay that the team makes little mistakes. If they veer off a little bit to the left, that’s fine. They rapidly learn it was a bad idea and correct their efforts. The short feedback cycles ensures the big mistakes happen far less often.

Instead of taking 12 to 18 months to create and evaluate a new concept, they build and put new version in front of users every 2 to 4 weeks. They also work in high bandwidth environments where all the team members are close together and close to the customer. Team members converge on and build concensus around good ideas over a period of hours, not months. Teams become experts through intense hands-on problem solving and testing. This ends up building products much more likely to serve real needs than those imagined in Platonic specs by ivory tower experts.

Agile development is favored by small start up teams because the techniques greatly reduce the risk of an individual team failing. If you only have room for one shot at the target, you might as well steer your way to success using lots of rich information instead of launching blindly into the unknown. Long term, agile processes delivering more value sooner, with lower overall risk.

An agile project is intensely focused. In the rush of completing only high priority features, many alternative concepts never get the chance to be explored. Customers, a rather vague and argumentative bunch at best, are required to speak with one voice in the name of reducing noise and thrash for the team. For many teams struggling just to get software out the door, these traits are a godsend. The downside is that there is little concept of strategic portfolio management.

Agile projects can be a bit like a hill climbing algorithm. They will steer towards the closest customer success story, but may ignore a bigger opportunity further away.