We do Scrum but…

Scrum – We don’t deliver a working increment every Sprint

Are you serious? — episode 3

This is one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto for Software Development:

Working software is the primary measure of progress. — AM

Think about what this means.

OK, let’s now look at Scrum. Many organizations use Scrum. In all kinds of shape and form. Pivotal for Scrum is the following:

“The heart of Scrum is a Sprint, a time-box of one month or less during which a “Done”, useable, and potentially releasable product Increment is created.” — SG

This is completely in line with the quoted principle of the Agile Manifesto. Still, despite of this, you see many invented practices like:

Hardening Sprint

A Hardening Sprint is an additional Sprint to finalize an item before it gets deployed. You can think about activities like regression testing, User Acceptance Testing, additional reviews, finalizing external interface issues. How sure are you that the “hardening” will take only one Sprint?