Product Goal, Sprint Goal and a Definition of Done, as a 🚀 journey to the moon 🌕 and back 🌍
Scrum describes three Artifacts and three Commitments to these Artifacts. Each Artifact contains a commitment to ensure it provides information that enhances transparency and focus against which progress can be measured:
- Commitment to the Product Backlog is the Product Goal
- Commitment to the Sprint Backlog is the Sprint Goal
- Commitment to the Increment is the Definition of Done
These three commitments are powerful, when used by Scrum Teams they enhance focus and transparency. Scrum Teams can use these goals to measure progress. These commitments to the Arifacts can be tricky to visualise and explain.
Imagine a journey into space 🌌 to the moon🌕and back 🌍?
The Product Goal: “Get People👨🚀to the Moon and Back”
The Sprint Goal(s) we collaboratively define each Sprint Goals during Sprint Planning. These goals are not planned in advance, but they are created individually at the start of each sprint by the end of sprint planning. These take us towards our Product Goal.
- Sprint 1 Goal — Successful Liftoff 🚀
- Sprint 2 Goal — Achieve low Earth orbit.
- Sprint 3 Goal — Orbital Refuel 🚀🚀
- Sprint 4 Goal — Transition to a trans-lunar trajectory
- Sprint 5 Goal — Achieve lunar orbit 🌕
- Sprint 6 Goal — Land on Moon 👨🚀
- Sprint 7 Goal — Successful Liftoff
- Sprint 8 Goal — Achieve lunar orbit
- Sprint 9 Goal — Transition to a trans-earth trajectory
- Sprint 10 Goal — Achieve low Earth orbit 🌍
- Sprint 11 Goal — Earth Re-entry🚀
- Sprint 12 Goal — Land Successfully
Our Definition of Done our Quality Goal:
- Cabin Remains Pressurised at approx 1
- co2 levels kept at a low safe level
- Internal Temperature is between 16 and 22c
- Gforce doesn’t exceed 5g
- Undamaged and remains Reusable so we can Launch again within 2 hours
“The Definition of Done is a formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality measures required for the product.” — Scrum Guide 2020
The state of the increment is really important, quality doesn’t decrease and a Scrum Team will adapt the Definition of Done to meet the quality measures required for the product and our organizational standards. The Definition of Done is often bigger than one Scrum Team, or even the Product.
“The Developers are required to conform to the Definition of Done. If there are multiple Scrum Teams working together on a product, they must mutually define and comply with the same Definition of Done.” — Scrum Guide 2020
I hope this simplification, as an analogy or a metaphor, helps to describe the difference between the three Commitments to the Artifacts, and how they enhance transparency and focus.
The Sprint Goal is a concrete stepping stone towards a Product Goal. It is one step we take to get a little closer, whilst continuing to meet our quality goal, the Definition of Done.
