Artifact: Potentially Shippable Product Incremement

The outcome of every sprint is a potentially shippable product increment.

Relationships

Roles	Responsible: Scrum Team	Modified By:

Description

Main Description	Scrum requires that each sprint deliver a potentially shippable product increment. The increment must consist of thoroughly tested code that has been built into an executable, and the user operation of the functionality is documeneted either in Help files or user documentation.

Key Considerations

There is much debate about the difference between "potentially shippable (done)" and "shippable".

Mike Cohn states:

.. "potentially shippable" and "shippable" are not the same thing. Some large or complex projects will require the use of "release sprint" or "hardening sprint" at the end of a release cycle (say 6 two-week sprints then a 2-week release sprint). The release sprint is not a dumping ground for sloppy work; rather it is a place where some hardening of the system can occur.

One thing is clear Scrum teams need to agree on their definition of "potentially shippable" and "shippable" and to come to a shared understanding with the Product Owner.

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
Eclipse Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution.