Traditional views on iterative and incremental development are under pressure due to new ideas like Kanban development and continuous deployment. The original views were never solid in the first place, because the agile methods have not agreed on frequencies, cycle length, pipelines and other aspects of evolutionary rhythms in software projects. This article is my attempt to evaluate the many directions agile practitioners have taken in iterative and incremental development. I also propose some new definitions, as it is my firm belief that the existing definitions need to adapt to an environment that has changed significantly.
I had tears running down my face when I finally clicked the Print button. And not just from exhaustion, but also from the horrific layout that my printer was spewing out. My my carefully designed article looked like a cross between an early 20th century communist pamflet and Steve Yegge's hairy backside. What went wrong? I don't know. Both the Word file and the PDF looked fine. One hour later, when I finally came by after having passed out, I emailed the PDF to one of my collegues at work. Fortunately, he found no problems printing it, and I am simply going to hope and pray that you will find no problems with it either. In the meantime, I am looking forward to my good old HP LaserJet 5M finding itself at the top of a big pile of computer parts in some faraway third world country. If anyone finds it there, I would appreciate receiving a picture of it.
Anyways, the article finished, and you can find it here. I am quite pleased with how it turned out. I have decided to post and publish this one myself. The three previous articles that I wrote are still under review by several magazines, and probably will be until my new printer has grown its own organic blu-ray interface. But I am not prepared to wait that long with this article.
So, I hope you will let me know what you think of it. I added a few links here and there, so you won't miss it. Any comments are welcome.