Agile Development Iteration or Sprint Overview

Last modified: July 29th, 2010

An iteration (or Sprint in Scrum) is a fixed-length timebox during which an agile software development team completes a subset of their product backlog. Typical iteration lengths range from 2-4 weeks, though some teams effectively use 1-week iterations and some go as long as 6 weeks. An iteration can be viewed as a mini project which seeks to deliver incremental units of business value in the form of working software. An iteration encompasses all the different activities needed to produce the working software, including planning, design, coding, testing, acceptance, and delivery.

Succeeding with Agile Software Development Using Scrum (Mike Cohn)
The Art of Agile Development
(James Shore)