Signature Cycle

A SignatureCycle is the list of all the people that have to sign off on a change before the change can be approved.

The time it takes for a change to go through a SignatureCycle depends on:

1. The number of people in the SignatureCycle.
2. Their workloads.
3. The priority of the change.
4. How thoroughly each person reviews the change.
5. The difficulty of addressing each signer's concerns.

In environments with long SignatureCycles, the length of a SignatureCycle determines the length of an iteration.

ExtremeProgramming environments try to have very short SignatureCycles -- typically the customer, two programmers, and whoever writes up the user documentation (if any).

In a good SignatureCycle, each reviewer takes responsibility for those aspects of the change that are related to the reviewer's area(s) of expertise.

A long SignatureCycle is an AntiPattern.