An Approach With Iterative and Incremental Development (IID) for Mobile Applications

Iterative Software Development

The first software development approach is iterative development. The term iteration describes a repeating process that aims to achieve a certain target or goal. The iterative development takes the large software development process and breaks it down to smaller portions or iterations (Cao et al., 2012). The outcome of one iteration is the start of the next one. Each iteration builds upon each other to create the full software development cycle or process. Different from other development processes, in iterative development each iteration contains the plan, design, development and test. This way when one iteration is completed the team evaluates that particular iteration, suggests any changes that need to be made and then uses those ideas to start the next iteration which also contains the planning, designing, development and testing (Potasso-Justino 2019). The first stage in an iterative development model is the planning phase. In this phase, the development team decides what hardware or software requirements we need so that those requirements are used for the other upcoming phases. The second phase in an iteration is designing where the business logic, database models and any technical requirement is defined. The next phase is development or implementation where the planning and design requirements are implemented, and coding takes place (Carlucho 2017). The last phase is testing, where the development team identifies any possible bugs or issues that show up during the implementation phase. Iterative development is more cyclical rather than the traditional step-by-step process that other models use. Figure 1 visualizes how iterative development works (Kaleel et al., 2013).

Figure 1.

Iterative Development Cycle

Using iterative development can be attractive to different software companies. One of the reasons is because of the iterations created (van Kessel et al., 2021). Iterations means building a software step by step, which allows the development team to identify defects at an early stage. Detecting defects as early as possible saves money, time and most importantly makes sure the development process is completed successfully without dragging previous errors into the next stage of development (Li et al., 2019). This also means that changing the project scope is easier to implement and less costly as well. Using iterations also helps in receiving feedback from customers. At the end of each iteration, feedback is given about what must be changed for the next iteration. Another advantage of using iterative development is that it saves time on documentation, as this process is more focused on design rather than documenting the process and development (Zein et al., 2016). Lastly, using iterations make it easier to measure the development process, which can be essential in the success of the project.