As an Engineering Leader, How I Manage Iterations

Preface

Iteration management looks different at every company. As product stages, team size, and resources change, the process evolves through practice and optimization. In my team, we review our iteration process every six months and make adjustments.

Below is the iteration workflow we optimized in early 2023.

What Problems Iteration Management Solves

In the diagram above there are three phases. The “product development” phase is the iteration process described below.

Development Process Methodology

Principles and Framework

Note: For the overall iteration cycle, we split it into larger stages that resemble a “waterfall” approach.

For requirement understanding and delivery, we use an agile approach and deliver/accept at the story level.

Principles We Follow

People’s initiative at the core: deliver higher-value products efficiently and with quality, and help team members become the best version of themselves.

Framework We Use

Scrum + Kanban

The goal of Agile is to help us discover how bad things are as early as possible, and start managing the situation early.

Process Overview

Roles

Detailed Breakdown

Requirements Phase

Kick Off Meeting

Goal: A kickoff, as the name suggests. Communicate product value, why we are doing it, and the iteration goals. No deep dive into product or prototype details.

Participants: Everyone

Actions

• PM -> present the product value in the PRD
• Master -> create the iteration version in the project management platform
• Master -> create a communication group in the communication tool

Impact Analysis Meeting

Goal: Understand existing system functionality and analyze the impact of this iteration

Participants: RD, FE, QA

Actions

• RD or FE -> explain current system features and analyze impact

PRD Review Meeting

Goal: Discuss requirements, implementation logic, and rule details to reach team-wide alignment on understanding (typically no more than 2 meetings).

Participants: Everyone

Actions

• PM -> deliver the final PRD

UI Review Meeting

Goal: Discuss page and interaction implementation to reach a shared understanding of UI/UX (typically no more than 2 meetings).

Participants: Everyone

Actions

• UI -> deliver page and interaction designs

Design and Estimation Phase

Plan Meeting

Goal: Confirm iteration scope, including business work, technical work, and backlog or bugs.

Participants: Everyone

Actions

• Master -> organize the plan meeting and confirm scope (review backlog and bugs in the project management platform)

Design Review Meeting

Goal: Discuss design, standards, implementation, data migration, historical tech debt, and release plans.

Participants: RD or FE, QA

Actions

• (As needed) RD -> produce design doc and review it (see How to write a design doc TODO)
  • First review: RD internal design review
  • Second review: RD + FE API design review
• (As needed) FE -> produce design doc and review it

Estimate Meeting

Goal: Based on the confirmed scope from the plan meeting, estimate effort and assign priorities and owners.

Participants: RD, FE, QA

Actions

• Master -> organize the estimate meeting and confirm effort (estimation method: planning poker TODO)

“R&D Cycle” Plan Release

Actions

• QA -> publish the iteration “R&D cycle” plan

• Master -> update all iteration info in the project management platform and officially enter coding

Test Case Review Meeting

Goal: Review completeness and quality of test cases.

Participants: RD, FE, QA

Actions

• QA -> organize the review (test cases maintained in the test case management platform)

Development Phase

Daily Stand-up Meeting

Goal: See TODO: How to run daily stand-ups

Participants: Everyone

Actions

• Master -> run the meeting, focusing on dependencies, blockers, risks, etc.

Desk Check and Story Testing

Actions

• RD & FE -> initiate story acceptance (how to do story acceptance TODO). After it passes, deploy to FAT for testing; QA records results.
• QA -> test the story; if there are no functional issues, close the story testing

Mid-term Check

Goal: Surface issues and anticipate risks

Actions

• Master -> at the midpoint of the iteration, organize a progress review to detect delay risks

Test and Acceptance Phase

System Testing

Actions

• RD & FE -> prepare deployment docs and submit deployment tickets
• QA -> in FAT
  • validate deployment docs
  • smoke testing
  • test cases (black-box, white-box)
  • regression testing (black-box, white-box)

Acceptance

Actions

• QA -> in UAT
  • validate deployment docs
• PM -> product acceptance
• UI -> UI acceptance
• QA -> in UAT
  • regression testing (black-box, white-box)

Release Phase

Release

Actions

• QA -> submit deployment ticket for approval, then release
• QA -> fill out release notes (internal)

Iteration Retrospective Phase

Review Meeting

Goal: Summarize iteration process and quality issues, run a retrospective, and optimize process, code quality, and collaboration.

Participants: Everyone

Actions

• Master -> gather iteration data and write the report
• Master -> organize a full-team review and discussion

Tools and Platforms