What is the purpose of the iteration review?
Iteration reviews are an essential practice that can improve how your development teams work. Do you need a better way to establish goals, time frames and even budgets, with a focus on well-managed processes that produce high quality results every time? If the answer to at least one of these questions is “yes”, then you should read on to find out what iteration reviews can provide.
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A closer look at iterations
Think of iterations as post-it notes on a timeline. Each one will have small, specific, time-restricted tasks that help organize a project and create a rhythm for your teams to follow. This is often achieved using working stories, where developers define:
- the main goals,
- what the product owner wants,
- what the stakeholders expect.
Once these are outlined, a process can be developed that will incorporate the functions of specific iterations.
With that process, development teams will be able to check an iteration and look at reports to determine if it is completed - and troubleshoot if it’s not. The good news is that there won’t be any consequences for incomplete tasks. They can simply be moved over to the next iteration and act as an insight into where future processes can be improved.
How do iteration reviews function?
When you need to build a digital product, Agile development processes and iteration reviews can be an integral part of bringing your idea to life. Also, feedback from the reviews will help your development teams to show product owners and stakeholders how each iteration is performing in real-time (using working stories).
Build for your team a sense of oneness, of depending on one another, and of strength to be derived by unity.
-Vince Lombardi, football coach
Using iteration reviews allows everybody involved to have an overview of the product as it moves forward, assess its progress, and highlight any areas that may need adjustment. From here, additional planning and backlog reviews can be made for further iterations.
Preparing for an iteration review
When defining iterations, your team should sit down and take into account how each one will be demonstrated. When you promote an environment that has the end goal of the task at the forefront of planning, you will be cultivating a more detailed understanding of what’s needed to achieve the level of quality and functionality that you expect.
What a review entails
First of all, the development team, the Scrum master, the product owner and shareholders are required to attend iteration reviews and these should be undertaken at the end of a product’s milestone. Typically, they should last an hour (depending on the length of the iteration timeline; so a two-week sprint should take two hours) and measure the team’s progress.
You can decide the nature of your meeting. It should suit the needs of the working environment you hope to establish, and the business goals you hope to accomplish. The meeting should cover:
- Iteration goals and their current status,
- An overview of all committed stories,
- Demonstrations of each completed story, using a functioning and tested system,
- A presentation of findings,
- An overview of stories outlined for the next iteration.
During the review, your development team and Scrum master should be encouraged to interact with stakeholders and the product owner and take note of their feedback. When answering the question, ‘an iteration review – what is it for?’ important metrics to consider are:
- The estimation of the difficulty of committed stories,
- The amount delivered/not delivered,
- The time frame of each iteration,
- The number of test cases undertaken,
- The number of issues, including the amount solved/rejected.
Next steps to take after iteration review
The main purpose of an iteration review is to inspect the outcome of the iteration and determine future adaptations; feedback from stakeholders is crucial. Your development teams should use the feedback to reflect upon the positive and negative aspects of their performance during iterations. This should take place during a phase known as the iteration retrospective, which should be initiated after the meeting has finished.
This is also the time to commend your teams for the hard work they’ve put in, and acknowledge the contributions they have made and the value they have brought, to both the product and your business.
Why do you need iteration reviews? The benefits
By breaking things down into small, bite-sized time frames, technical and business theories can be put to the test in real time and in a way that won’t put unnecessary pressure on your development teams. Areas such as functionality, the usability of specific processes and even quality of work can all be assessed at incremental stages.
Top tips to get the best out of iteration reviews
Nobody likes to sit through meetings, so in order to ensure the highest level of worthwhile feedback these reviews are designed to be interactive and to the point. With this in mind, it can be a good idea to:
- Ensure preparations are made cohesively to promote flow,
- Keep meetings to one to two hours,
- Keep the number of slides to a minimum,
- Use the definition of done (DoD) glossary to verify completed stories and highlight incomplete stories if feedback is necessary,
- Ensure that product owners follow up with stakeholders that are unable to attend meetings,
- Ensure that the focus of the meetings stays on feedback and encourage a positive environment by appreciating the accomplishments of the team.
Important features of Agile and Scrum methodologies
It is the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.
– Charles Darwin, scientist
Taking a new approach to how businesses function, Agile development is less restrictive for teams and promotes a more self-organizing, interactive environment for product building. Agile frameworks give a greater sense of teamwork and how each individual feels about their role within your business.
The systems used in Agile development promote flexibility and an active roadmap, and often streamlines product creation for faster, higher-quality end results. It also works to better align your business goals with your customer’s requirements, to ensure all needs are met throughout the entire development of the product.
Iteration reviews often fall into the bracket of Scrum frameworks. These are pivotal in Agile, to manage development both repetitively (to promote workflow and highlight issues faster) and incrementally (to keep everything on track and ensure the correct aspects are being taken care of at the right time). As the working environment and clientèle are becoming more demanding, it’s important for your business to adapt, and stay up to date with trends.
At Boldare, our digital product development teams aim to share expert knowledge, so that you have access to worthwhile support, advice and more that can elevate the entire process of product development from start to finish. If you are interested in learning more about how we work, feel free to contact us.
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