Multiple Iterations In Development: Isolated Or All At Once?

bas says : If you need multiple iterations to deliver a software project, you can have
three strategies:

A. all sequential (isolated)
B. all little overlap between the iterations
C. all at once

Jeff Sutherland has written a great article about the three strategies in combination with SCRUM:

http://jeffsutherland.com/scrum/Sutherland2005FutureofScrum20050603.pdf

bas says : It is a while ago that i read this article, so i read it again.. here is some interesting research (i formatted the text for readability):

[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=">Regarding the use of specifications, there was a significant relationship between the completeness of the functional specification and productivity.[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>

[FONT=Times New Roman>[SIZE=3>There was a weak relationship between the completeness of the detailed design specification and defect rate. [/SIZE>[/FONT>

[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=">The former result suggests that developers are more productive to the degree that a complete functional specification exists prior to coding. This is intuitive, given that the functional specification outlines the features that developers must complete. To the degree that these are stated up front, developers can focus solely on “executing” these features in code.[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>

[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>… Analysis showed three primary factors that lowered defect rate[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>[LIST>
[*>[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>early prototype, [/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>
[*>[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>design reviews, and [/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>
[*>[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>integration or regression testing at code checkin[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>[/LIST> [FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>
and two primary factors that increased productivity [/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>[LIST>
[*>[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>early prototype and [/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>
[*>[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>daily builds.

[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>[/LIST> [FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>Releasing a prototype to customers that is only 40% functionally complete increases[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>
[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>productivity by 36% and adopting the practice of daily builds increases productivity by[/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>
[FONT=Arial>[SIZE=3>[FONT=TimesNewRoman>93%. [/FONT>[/SIZE>[/FONT>