| In practice, *practice*, we use the term iterative pretty loosely. In fact sort of like this IEEE article, it feels dated now, and was never really true in my experience. It seemed like the word iterative became a euphemism for “dont worry about it”. I have worked across the entire industry for 30 years, and I have never seen a “true iteration”. On any feature or application. Anything at the end of the sprint that doesnt work is just a bug. Thats not iteration. Iterative development was just a powerpoint slide for the Scrum Industrial Complex which was hard selling itself and it worked! This article which seems even more antiquated than Id like to describe, seems to confuse iterative with “having all the requirements at once”. Iteration and the quality of requirements, and the bandwidth to analyze them and design a system dont really have much to do with each other. And thats why iterative came to be a stand in for “dont worry about it”. I personally feel that the creators of Scrum or some responsible group of modern architects, should audit the results of supposed iterative development, and do an honest assessment of what it actually is in practice. Because its not what we were sold, and its not iterative. It does result in awfully bad software but there have been other shifts in development practice that have accelerated the awfulness of delivered work in the industry, and Ill just leave it at that. Please resist the temptation to comment, “because your not doing scrum right”. That was the genius of the Scrum Industrial Complex, to suggest that somehow this simple thing is really magical and complex and keep repeating the same things over and over. Its not magical or complex, its just bad. As far as the article goes, I have been on projects that did spend over a year ingesting requirements and doing design before starting to code. Its true they usually fail. But thats a money/commitment/time to market problem. Starting to “code” right away creates some better optics and fewer arguments in meetings. The one who pays the piper calls the tune as always. |