Jeff Patton illustrates iterating and incrementing well:

incremental development – we build a piece at a time, having a finished design upfront, expecting no changes.

iterative development – we build something, then evaluate, then make changes to it, i.e., we expect to change it.

(i don’t quite like that both illustrations end up in the exact same Mona Lisa…)

i just saw a very nice description of a backlog mapping by Energized Work, described by Simon Baker. Lisa Crispin also blogged about it after a visit – The Whole Team Approach in Practice.

what i really like about this is the support for starting small, iterate+ increment, while keeping functionality and value visible.

Update:

There’s also a post about a mind-map form illustration high-level user experience replacing backlog, also at Energized Work.

The pink Post-It notes represent the different users. The blue Post-It notes represent the user activities and the yellow Post-It notes represent the high-level user tasks.

Another quote from this (emphasis mine):

We don’t use a burn-down chart to illustrate how much of the backlog is done. We consider this to be waste because the product is a moving target and the backlog can never done until the product is no longer available. However, we do visualize the investment made in the product to date.