Keeping Your Iterative Projects on Track

 

The iterative approach to delivering software releases makes a very convincing value proposition: Delivering hard and visible results as often as you can to your customers by breaking up and releasing your big software project in a series of small, working versions in incremental stages throughout the lifetime of the project. Learn more on the iterative approach in Divide and Conquer.

When done properly, the iterative approach gives your customers high-visibility into the state of progress, and provides them with plenty of opportunities for giving feedback and improving features and functionality. But there is a dark side to all this: The more often you put functioning software into your customers' hands, the more opportunities they will have to request changes that risk taking your project off the original track.

I recently asked experienced software professionals Thaddeus Neal and Brian Lanham for their advice and perspectives on managing change request and customer feedback in iterative projects. Here's what they said.

Watch out for scope creep
"The biggest problem with the iterative process is scope creep," says Thaddeus Neal, who is an eBusiness Consultant with Maverick Technologies, LLC. His expertise is ERP implementation and enhancement design for supply chain solutions (primarily in procurement, logistics and distribution streamlining efforts). Thad also serves as …

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