Agile & Delivery playbook/Module 1 · Agile foundations

Day 05 / 100 · Agile foundations · Iterative vs incremental

Build it in slices.

Incremental adds finished pieces. Iterative refines a rough whole. The best delivery does both, a point Jeff Patton made famous with his Mona Lisa sketches.

Incremental

Piece By Piece

Finish the login, then billing, then faults.

Risk: nothing useful end to end until the last piece lands.

Iterative

Rough, Then Better

Sketch the whole thing, then refine it.

Risk: it never quite gets finished.

Both

Thin And Whole

One useful slice, end to end, then improve.

Customers get value early, and you learn fast.

Source: Jeff Patton & Associates: Don't Know What I Want, But I Know How to Get It ↗

Thin, whole, useful. Then better.