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:
- The number of people in the SignatureCycle.
- Their workloads.
- The priority of the change.
- How thoroughly each person reviews the change.
- 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.