I really can’t let this incremental delivery topic go. According to the 2020 Scrum Guide, “Scrum employs an iterative, incremental approach to optimize predictability and to control risk.” This means that Scrum teams deliver a done, usable increment of working product frequently.
Here's an analogy to explain incremental delivery in a simple way. Imagine if you needed to deliver a giant hexagon. A team delivering the hexagon using a predictive or traditional approach would deliver the hexagon all in one piece. A team using incremental delivery might deliver a lot of little hexagons which would add up to the larger hexagon. (For more analogies like this, check out our article What is Iterative, Incremental Delivery? The Hunt for the Perfect Example)
Now, this analogy does not fully capture the benefits of incremental delivery. There are many benefits of delivering value incrementally. The Scrum guide calls out predictability and controlling risk as the two main benefits. In this article, I want to focus on incremental delivery’s impact on risk.
Below are some of the common types of risk and how incremental can help address these risks.
Technical Risk
