2

In Software Requirements by Karl Wiegers:

Project teams that build products incrementally by following an agile development process also need to understand the requirements that go into each increment.

What does "increment" and "incrementally" mean here?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    It means breaking down larger goals into smaller discrete steps that can then be achieved individually.
    – Michael Durrant
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 18:50

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
4

In this context, "increment" or "iteration" refer to making relatively small changes to a program before rebuilding or redeploying it. One of the core ideas of agile is that you want to aim for frequent, rapid iterations.

In agile you typically want the program to be buildable and shippable at all times. It may not be terribly useful or feature-complete for a while, but you always want it to be a thing you can actually build and ship right away so that people can start testing it and giving feedback (as opposed to the "waterfall" approach where no one can really try it out until the whole thing is finished). Then you add features to it one at a time, though each one may take anywhere from a day to a couple of weeks or maybe even months.

In many places each increment/iteration is the release made at the end of a "sprint", i.e. a period of 1-2 weeks associated with a short list of tasks the team aims to get done in that time.

Improve this answer
3
  • is it riht to say that " Increment" and " iteration" are synonyms? Or there are some difference between them?
    – Khrystyna from Ukraine
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 19:42
  • 3
    You can have increments without iteration. Equating an increment with an iteration is not correct.
    – Thomas Owens ♦
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 15:44
  • @KhrystynafromUkraine: "Increment" means a small portion of functionality or requirement you add to a program within the timeline of an iteration. You can not only have increments without iterations, you can also have iterations without increments - when you do only refactoring, without adding new functionality to your program.
    – Doc Brown
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 14:43
4

An "increment" in this context is a small piece of functionality. To build "incrementally" means completing (and potentially releasing) your work in small bits at a time, as opposed to one large release. "Iteration" refers to the (small) cycles of work that you go through to be able to release incrementally. They are related, but not interchangeable, terms.

Improve this answer
1

I have not read this title, but usually when someone says build software incrementally they're referring to delivering more and more functionality in iterations. There are different approaches to this, but a lot of them mean starting by developing a minimum set of features/functionality, delivering this to the customer, and responding to feedback/refining the deliverable/adding more functionality. Repeat until project competition.

The idea with this type of approach is that you're doing small bursts of work and then reevaluating to make sure you're still moving in the best direction. This allows development teams to respond to changes better.

Improve this answer
1
  • 1
    You can be incremental without being iterative.
    – Thomas Owens ♦
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 15:43
-1

Here's discussion on SO.

I like the idea of incrementally building something (adding parts), in an iterative way (building each part in a feedback loop).

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.