Cadence, backlogs, sprints and the roles around them. The mechanics of iterative delivery, and how to tell an adaptation from a workaround.
Articles
Predictive work gets an ending for free, the day the thing is handed over. Iterative work has to manufacture one, which is why so much of it never formally ends at all.
Cadence is the beat the work runs to. Delivery cadence is how often finished output reaches the people who asked for it. Teams conflate the two and then wonder why nobody feels the pace.
Iteration-based agile fixes the length of the cycle and commits a batch to it. Flow-based agile fixes the amount of work in progress and pulls the next item when a slot frees.
Terms
The fixed length of the cycle a team plans, works and reviews in. Its value comes from repeating, not from being short.
Work organised as a continuous pull with no fixed iteration, controlled instead by a limit on how much may be in progress at once.
One turn of a team's working cycle, fixed in length, ending in something that could in principle be delivered.
The number of work items completed per unit of time, counted where work leaves the system rather than where it is started.
A cap on how many items may be in progress at once, which forces work to be finished before anything new is started.