Iteration and iteration types
Projects are organized into a series of development periods called iterations. Each timeline contains a hierarchy of iterations, which can define start and end dates.
An iteration hierarchy typically represents broad phases of a project, each of which is divided into a series of shorter iterations. The following example contains development and maintenance timelines. The Main Development timeline contains two release iterations (Release 1.0 and Release 2.0). The Maintenance timeline contains Release Iteration 1.0.1. Each release iteration has child iterations (Milestone 1, Milestone 2, and so on).


You can create iteration types and associate an iteration with an iteration type. For each iteration type, you can configure specific permissions and, for Engineering Workflow Management and Quality Management project areas and team areas, operation behavior. Those permissions and behavior settings apply to all iterations of the iteration type. For example, your organization might want to establish stricter control on deliveries towards the end of a release. To do this, you might create an iteration type with a name such as End Game, and configure the behavior for that iteration type to require team members to get approvals before delivering change sets. All iterations of the End Game iteration type would enforce that behavior.