Iterations

An iteration is made up of two phases: a planning phase and an implementation phase.

In the planning phase:

1. Instantiated will provide rough estimates for the existing story cards
   • Some stories might have high estimates because they have a high technical risk due to Instantiated not fully understanding the requirements
   • Eventually, the stories with high estimates will get lower estimates, or broken into smaller stories with lower estimates, due to Instantiated gaining a better understanding of the requirements.
   • A story must have an estimate between two and eight hours before its risk is deemed low enought to be implemented
2. Together, we will prioritize the stories based on business value, business risk and technical risk
3. Together, we will select as many of the highest priority stories as will fit into an iteration (based on our estimates)

This planning phase normally takes two to four hours.

In the implementation phase, Instantiated implement each of the stories as follows:

1. We will consult with one of your subject matter experts to confirm that we fully understand the requirements for the story
2. We will identify a set of tests that exercises each of the requirements
3. We will take each of the tests and implement the test, followed immediately by an implementation of code in the application that makes that test pass

At the end of the iteration, you will have an applicatio that implements the selected stories along with a fully automated test suite that verifies the implementation. The length of an iteration is up to you and varies from one to three weeks.

Note that during the normal course of your testing and operation of the application, you will discover requirements that were not fully understood or other defects. In these cases, the defect is recorded as story and incorporated into an iteration using the normal iteration life cycle.

An iteration is the standard chunk of work in our services.