Scrum Philosophy: Release Early, Release Often

Release early, release often is a software development philosophy that emphasizes the importance of early and frequent releases in creating a tight feedback loop between developers and testers or users, contrary to a feature-based release strategy.

Advocates argue that this allows the software development to progress faster, enables the user to help define what the software will become, better conforms to the users’ requirements for the software, and ultimately results in higher quality software. The development philosophy attempts to eliminate the risk of creating software that no one will use. Setting up for frequent releases “from the early stages of the project” is a cornerstone of Agile’s risk reduction approach.

Prioritize Product Backlog Features

Scrum teams work on the project features according to their priority. They specifically don’t work according to the chronological experience of the entire product backlog. They especially don’t divide up all the features in the backlog and work on them simultaneously.

Scrum team chooses the highest priority feature, and work to complete it first, before moving on to the next feature. When the team has reached the milestone of having built the most important feature, they don’t just move on to the next feature in the list. Rather, they release the current version to their target audience, so that their users can immediately benefit from the value that the team has created. This also creates an opportunity for real users to give real feedback based on actual use of the project.

Scrum References

• What are the Scrum Events?
• What are Scrum Ceremonies?
• What is Product Backlog Grooming?
• What are the 3 Important Questions in Daily Scrum?
• Scrum Sprint Cycle in 8 Steps
• What is a Sprint in Scrum?
• Heartbeat of Scrum — The Daily Standup
• Daily Scrum Meeting — A Quick Guide