Marc Bless: Agile Principle 3: Frequent Delivery

Let's take a look at the third underlying principle of the agile manifesto:

"Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale."

What does that really mean? What are the implications for our daily business? Let's analyze this principle and see where this gets us.

"Deliver" - actually have something finished that is worth being given to the users.
Values: Courage, Commitment
Principles: Deliver as fast as possible
Practices: Incremental Deployment, Small Releases, Sprint Review, Product Demonstration
"working software" - the results of our efforts must not be theoretical concepts or prototypes, but a functional software product the user is able to work with effectively
Values: Focus, Commitment
Principles: Quality
Practices: Definition of Done, Acceptance Tests, Sprint Review, Product Demonstration
"frequently" - give an usable product more often to the users than just once at the end of the development project
Values: Focus, Courage
Principles: Frequent Delivery
Practices: Incremental Deployment, Small Releases
"from a couple of weeks to a couple of months" - keep the iterations short so they are easily manageable and clearly arranged
Values: Focus
Principles: Deliver as fast as possible, Iterative
Practices: Iteration
"with a preference to the shorter timescale" - create results early and often so the customer is able to react and decide quickly
Values: Focus, Simplicity
Principles: Iterative, Limit Work in Progress, Deliver as fast as possible, Eliminate Waste
Practices: Incremental Deployment, Small Releases, Sprint Backlog, Iteration

There's not much to summarize here but to say it in two words, the third principle is about Frequent Delivery.

Also read in this blog post series:

Marc Bless