What is the difference between release and iteration?

Question

The title says What is the difference between release and iteration? Can you explain what the difference is?

Answer 1

Iterations are basically single units of work within your release plan. Typically, your iteration planning phase will be a short (1-4 week) series of tasks that will be done.

After an iteration, there should be a series of acceptance tests. This verifies that the problem domain was handled correctly.

The series of iterations plus acceptance lead to a single release. The release leads to deployment, whether to a customer or internal usage by the end user (which is the critical difference).

Granted, in many teams, the lines can blur a bit, especially if you're releasing every iteration, etc...

Answer 2

An iteration can be purely internal. A release goes out to a customer.

Answer 3

We can say in simple words, Release is "What to do" and Iteration is "How to do". Release focuses on User stories and iterations focuses on Tasks decomposed from user stories.