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Question: In Scrum methodology, is it possible to have multiple iterations before a product is considered shippable for a release?

I think Release and Iteration should have a one-to-one mapping so that at end of every iteration a product is ready for a release, but not sure.

Sunil
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about programming. – Vadim Kotov Oct 27 '17 at 08:35
  • @VadimKotov, That's no problem. But my basic question remains: why are topics like release and scrum still on stackoverflow? I think they should be removed since these topics will always have questions without any code. these topics are not about programming languages. – Sunil Oct 27 '17 at 08:53
  • Can a question on `scrum` ever be about programming and code? – Sunil Oct 27 '17 at 08:54
  • Because we did not have Project Management SE or Software Engineering SE before. These old questions and obsolete tags will be deleted eventually after clean-up like this. – Vadim Kotov Oct 27 '17 at 08:54
  • If all questions under `scrum` are going to be deleted then that's fine. – Sunil Oct 27 '17 at 08:55
  • Take a look here -- https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/343829/is-stack-overflow-an-appropriate-website-to-ask-about-project-management-issues – Vadim Kotov Oct 27 '17 at 08:55
  • That's fine by me. But I do think that some very useful knowledge base is being destroyed in a single stroke. Knowledge that people all over the world can greatly benefit from. This question you are about to delete can provide useful clues and knowledge for many others. A better option would have been to transfer this vast knowledge base to another discussion forum under stackoverflow. – Sunil Oct 27 '17 at 09:00
  • It's not easy to build up knowledge but its very easy to destroy it in a second. Just my thought on this. – Sunil Oct 27 '17 at 09:01
  • Well, thats a downside -- we can loose something. But majority of these questions were already discussed on PM SE or Software Engineering SE. According to the current rules, you cant discuss such things here (even if we already have such legacy questions). To be able to continue answering those questions and building knowledge base, we should continue on another SE sites – Vadim Kotov Oct 27 '17 at 09:03
  • that is fine. but out of sheer respect for knowledge, i believe that knowledge should never be destroyed but preserved. it's wrong to say that these questions have been asked before under some other topic. – Sunil Oct 27 '17 at 09:07
  • You can post an answer describing you position on Meta SE (for example [here](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/355013/do-we-really-need-these-software-engineering-related-tags)). Answers on Meta are not counted towards your reputation, so feel free to discuss such things there. – Vadim Kotov Oct 27 '17 at 09:10
  • @VadimKotov, should I delete this question or it will be automatically deleted by the cleanup process? – Sunil Oct 28 '17 at 06:50
  • It will be deleted eventually. No need to do anything, I think it will be closed soon. – Vadim Kotov Oct 28 '17 at 12:29

1 Answers1

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Traditionally scrum calls for a "potentially releasable product" at the end of each sprint. )From the "Sprint" definition found here: https://www.scrum.org/Resources/Scrum-Glossary)

Of course, there may be business or other reasons to delay that release. Such as a launch date tied to new regulations/laws that go into effect in the future.

There are ways around this kind of thing though such as the use of feature flags so that the software is fully tested and released, but the feature is not yet enabled. This has its own overhead and not a slam dunk approach for every team.

Other teams have gotten to a point beyond 1:1::iteration:release. They actually release every feature immediately upon completion. Their "definition of done" includes releasing to production. This is summarized in a recent tweet by Jeff Sutherland (co-creator of Scrum) "Get your stories small, use one code branch, and everything goes to production " https://twitter.com/jeffsutherland/status/503569798924472320

There is no one right answer for every team, but releasing more frequently is almost always a good thing.

Jody
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  • Nice explanation. My impression was that a sprint meant there should be a deliverable functionality at the end of a sprint. Whether it gets deployed or not depends on when your Release is planned. If it does not get deployed then the stakeholders can still checkout the deliverable functionality and provide feedback at end of the sprint. – Sunil Aug 25 '14 at 18:45