Iterative Development

Why Trust Techopedia

What Does Iterative Development Mean?

Iterative development is a methodology of software development that divides a project into many releases. The main idea of iterative development is to create small projects that have a well-defined scope and duration and constantly do builds and updates as soon as possible.

Advertisements

Techopedia Explains Iterative Development

The mantra is to release early and often. The thinking is that no matter how well you plan, you can’t encompass every scenario, nor can you completely envision how users will react with the end product. By getting code released earlier, a dev team gets feedback quicker, and can theoretically react faster with bug fixes, improvements, etc.

A critic of iterative development would say it is simply releasing sloppy code done without proper planning. Iterative development is the opposite of a waterfall methodology and most closely aligned with agile development or extreme programming.

Advertisements

Related Terms

Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret é uma premiada redatora e professora conhecida por sua habilidade de explicar assuntos técnicos complexos para um público empresarial não técnico. Nos últimos vinte anos, suas definições de TI foram publicadas pela Que em uma enciclopédia de termos tecnológicos e citadas em artigos do New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine e Discovery Magazine. Ela ingressou na Techopedia em 2011. A ideia de Margaret de um dia divertido é ajudar os profissionais de TI e de negócios a aprenderem a falar os idiomas altamente especializados uns dos outros.