Complete Guide on Product Increment (PI) in Scrum

In Scrum, Cross-functional teams deliver services and products in short-lived cycles. The Scrum Teams do it by breaking huge services and products into small pieces known as Product Increments. Cross-functional teams can complete them within a short timeframe. The result of every Sprint is a working Product Increment. 

The Scrum Guide 2020 explains an increment as a stable stepping stone toward achieving the product goal. Every increment in Scrum is additive to all previous increments and they are verified completely. This is done to make sure that all increments work in combination with each other. It will be possible to achieve value only when the increment is usable. The whole Scrum Team will be responsible for the creation of a useful and valuable increment for every Sprint.

The problem here is that some teams do not comprehend this concept and still approach product development in a conventional way of developing, bringing together, testing, and deploying. Scrum Teams develop Sprints, 1, 2, 3, and so on. After some time,  they develop a special Sprint and bring together everything, evaluate, package, and deliver.

In this traditional approach, teams might split their work by architecture, services, components, features, and building blocks like developing the back end first. Thereafter, they create the front-end user interface and middle-tier business logic. In every scenario, they get to the end of the Sprint with an increment that is not complete and usable. Only after the special Sprint, does the team deliver a working and integrated increment. In Scrum, a Product Increment is whatever you developed previously along with anything new you completed recently in the latest Sprint all brought together, evaluated, and ready to be deployed or delivered.

What is Product Increment in Scrum?

You might now have some idea of what is Product Increment in Scrum. You can consider it to be a crucial artifact or deliverable of Scrum. Yes, you are right! It is the integration of completed items from the Product Backlog during the Sprint. As you can understand from its name, Product Increment continuously gets growth in the Sprints that follow. 

In a specific Sprint, the Product Increment in Scrum is the integration of the completed list of items in the Product Backlog. On the other hand, when you take the case of a project as a whole, Product Increment is the integration of all the completed list of backlog items in the Sprint. With every Sprint, the Product Increment Scrum also increases with respect to functionality released to customers.

In Scrum, it is possible to create multiple increments within a single Sprint. During the Sprint Review, the sum of the increments is presented, thereby supporting practicality. Nevertheless, an increment might be released to stakeholders before the Sprint ends. It is better not to consider the Sprint Review as an entry to releasing value. It is not possible to consider work as a part of the increment until it meets the Definition of Done or DOD.

Definition of Done:

DOD is nothing but a formal description of the state of increment when it meets the quality measures needed for the product. An increment is born as soon as an item in the Product Backlog meets the DOD.

The DOD generates transparency by offering everyone a shared knowledge of what work was finished as a part of the increment. As mentioned earlier, it is not possible to present an item in the Product Backlog at the Sprint Review if it does not meet DOD. Also, it cannot be released. On the other hand, it gets back to the Product Backlog for consideration in the future.

In case the DOD for an increment is part of the ethics of the organization, it is the responsibility of all Scrum Teams to follow them at the least. Let us consider that it is not an organizational standard. In this case, the Scrum Team must create a DOD suitable for the product.

The developers should obey the DOD. In case, an organization has many Scrum Teams working in conjunction with each other on a product, they must conjointly outline and meet the terms of the same DOD.

What is the Purpose of Product Increment?

The Scrum Team is responsible for deciding what they can consider as an increment. However, what they consider as increments differs from one Scrum Team to another. However, the team members should know about the work they should complete. It is used as an approximation of when work will be completed on Product Increment. This aids in guiding the team members in selecting the items in the Product Backlog during the Sprint Planning Session. The product responsibility will be held by the development team. The purpose of every Sprint is to deliver a software product that works.

The Scrum process aims at delivering quality such that the product is in the state of done at the end of every iteration. In other words, it is an indication that it is ready for release. It can be released to clients to get feedback early. Otherwise, it is an indication that it can be used for testing. In general, organizations should deliver a product that is ready for shipping as per the schedule of the Scrum process. This practice permits the product to be a part of the process that is done again and again.

In the case of teams that practice Scrum, the production site might always reveal the latest work completed by the team members during ongoing iterations. In these instances, the public site or an app will be the end Product Increment. The result of the Sprint in this case is the Product Increment with a software product that is capable of using and owned by the product owner. The Sprint review is the input supplied to the increment for delivery of a product that is capable enough to be shipped.

Know About Potentially Shippable Product Increment:

Potentially Shippable product is the combination of the items from the Product Backlog that are shipped or moved to the closing point of every Sprint. In the traditional waterfall model, the delivery of the potentially shippable product can happen only after the product goes through all levels of SDLC.  This might take several months. On the other hand, when it comes to Scrum, potentially shippable Product Increment is delivered in Sprints. This is done by splitting the big functionalities from the Product Backlog into tiny pieces. After splitting, they are taken into Sprints based on priority.

Delivery of Product Increment:

In any organization, the development team will handle the Product Increment regularly. This will showcase, the roadmap of the product owner and will support the vision. Even, it will meet the DOD of the team.

Ideal Time to Release the Product Increment into the Market:

When every Sprint gets to the concluding point, the Product Increment will be ready for release. But, when talking about Product Increment Scrum, you should know the difference between potentially releasable and potentially shippable products. When it reaches the conclusion of the Sprint, the product will be ready for shopping. This does not mean that the product can be released into the market. The reason is that teams should decide on the release based on different factors.

So, here comes the question of when to say that the Product Increment can be let to the market. It can be released only after thorough testing and is complete from different angles with the best quality.  You might wonder why these criteria are important. 

You can imagine that you use a banking app. But, on a fine day, you see that your account is debited with a huge amount. Your experience will be bad undoubtedly. But, how to avoid such experiences? It is crucial that the release happens only after thorough testing.    Jere, testing alone is not enough.  The team should make sure that all the high-severity and critical bugs are resolved. It is equally important to make sure that the product is high quality and that not many known issues are present in the product. 

Further, before the release of the Product Increment, it is important to make sure that the Product Increment is complete from the point of view of the end user.  In other words, a specific feature that customers consider important should be working properly. It means that the functionality should get through the definition of done to make sure that it is ready for release to the market. Even though everything is ready technically for the release of the product,  there are other things to consider before the release. Yes, for instance, it involves financial decisions to be made.

Based on the cost of release and economics, the Scrum Team will decide on the release date. If it is not a very high cost to release at the close of every Sprint, then after every Sprint the release is planned. In case, it is costly, it relies on the customer based on how many Sprints the customer wants the Product Increment to be released in the market.

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Conclusion:

Development teams work on user stories in a Sprint. At the close of every Sprint, they release potentially shippable Product Increment that is of good quality and tested for the same. With every Sprint, the Product Increment continues to increase concerning functionality.  Now, with the Scrum Product Increment definition knowledge, you can use it effectively in your project.