Getting to Yes

It is an obvious good practice to limit external dependencies on any project you are trying to ship in a timely manner. What's difficult is limiting dependencies while still assuming responsibility for delivery. The honest approach means you have to be specific about achievable goals.

Should customer acceptance be a sprint goal? Logically, customer acceptance is key to the definition of done. In reality, internal customers are reluctant to formally "sign off" and external customers vote with their wallets (or behavior) long after a sprint is over.

That is the reason we endeavor to ship Minimum Viable Product (MVP) quickly without formal sign off or lengthy focus group studies. We're going to invite polite feedback here and say: Don't make customer acceptance a sprint goal.

That is not license to stop listening! Instead, it is an imperative to accept feedback readily and iterate quickly. We follow this form on our early sprint goals:

That is not license to stop listening! Instead, it is an imperative to accept feedback readily and iterate quickly. We follow this form on our early sprint goals:

* Demo the shopping cart using production data.

And the next sprint:

* Incorporate feedback from shopping cart demo and push to production.

Is it cheating that we didn't ship the shopping cart in the first sprint? Not if the sprints are short enough.