Sprint and Iteration

In modern software development, "sprint" and "iteration" are terms often used interchangeably. Both represent timeboxed periods during which a development team plans, crafts, refines, and reviews a set of objectives. Yet, considering both concepts call for a fixed time and somewhat fixed scope, we must ponder — should these terms truly be interchangeable?

The History of Iteration

The term "iteration" embraced various meanings before Extreme Programming (XP) catapulted it into the mainstream software development vocabulary. Craig Larman and Victor Basili shed light on this varied history in their 2003 paper, "Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History," delineating different approaches like the timeboxed strategy favored in projects such as NASA's Project Mercury and others grounded in evolutionary, feedback-driven cycles.

Historical iterations didn't always adhere to a timebox like sprints do, but they nonetheless maintained clear objectives and required feedback through an integrated system.

The Changing Landscape

In the past, hardware and engineering limitations often delayed the full integration. For iterative development, people needed inventive solutions such as utilizing stubs for top-down development to make the timebox more manageable, but it, unfortunately, truncated the full feedback cycle.

Today, many of those constraints have been lifted owing to advancements in hardware and optimized development pipelines. This progression has significantly shortened the timeframe required for a comprehensive feedback cycle incorporating a fully integrated system and real user experiences. Despite maintaining their non-deterministic character, these cycles can, on average, conclude in a duration much shorter than a sprint, even narrowing down to developing a single Product Backlog Item or less.

Iterations within a Sprint

While timeboxed sprints remain vital, especially in large-scale Scrum frameworks that facilitate planning synchronization across diverse teams and external partners, they also offer a steady rhythm aiding teams in continuously improving their processes.

The developmental work within a sprint can still adhere to both iterative and incremental principles. Envision a two-week sprint allocated to address four product backlog items. Each item may differ in size but can be handled through one or several iterations.

Conclusion

Modern software development landscapes permit the execution of multiple iterations within a single sprint.