Iterative and Incremental
What is Iterative and Incremental Development?
Imagine if you’re making a vast Lego castle. It’s so big; you can’t build it all at once. So, what do you do? You build it step-by-step, part by part. Iterative and Incremental Development is just like that.
- Iterative means you build a small part, then improve it repeatedly, like adding more to your Lego castle daily.
- Incremental means it’s something meaningful each time you add a new part. For today, you build a tower; tomorrow, you add a gate; and the next day, a garden.
So, with iterative and incremental development, every little piece we build makes our software better and better. We keep adding and improving until we have our big, finished software castle!
Benefits and Downsides of Iterative and Incremental Development
Benefits
- Get to play earlier: You can start playing before the castle is built. Each new piece you build can be used right away.
- Learn as you go: If you make a mistake or find a better way to build your castle, you can change it the next time you add a piece.
- Less scary: It’s less overwhelming to think about one piece at a time rather than the entire castle simultaneously.
Downsides
- Hard to plan: It can be hard to know precisely how long it will take to build the entire castle because you’re figuring it out as you go.
- If you learn something new that changes your plan, you might need to redo some parts of the castle you built.
- It can be repetitive: You may need to do some things repeatedly, like checking that the castle is still sturdy each time you add a new piece.
Further Reading
- “Iterative and Incremental Development: A Brief History” by Craig Larman and Victor R. Basili. It’s a detailed look into the history of this development model.
- “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit” by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. This book gives you a great understanding of how this method fits into modern software development.
- “Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices” by Robert C. Martin. This book explains how iterative and incremental development is a part of the more extensive Agile methodology.
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