Sometimes it just takes a genius to tell you, in much better words that you could ever find, something that was just under your nose and you couldn’t see.

This is from Ron Jeffries’ blog:

[…]

As such, my inclination is to suggest that an “Agile” framework should include a Product Review Cadence, a regular interval, where the team and stakeholders consciously review the running tested software Increment, with an eye to how to improve it in the future.

Quite likely, I’ll also suggest a Retrospective Cadence, where the team reviews how they’ve been doing the work and how to improve.

If I were truly clever, I might call these the WHAT Review Cadence and the HOW Review Cadence. Let’s hope I’m not truly clever.

[…]

This illustrates a fix the major sub-optimal part of scrum, the repeated arbitrariness of deadlines and bundling of batches larger than they could and should be, which also dictates how often you review your process, when to deliver your product, and when to think about it.

In his view, Ron Jeffries doesn’t discard the necessity of such activities, but admits that they don’t need to be bound together, and as such, can be identified and treated as different cadences:

  • Product increment, which corresponds to what’s delivered, and is depending on the time it takes to build the increment (“in a true “continuous integration” shop, there would be an Increment daily or even more often`“)
  • Product review cadence, where the “interested stakeholders review the present Increment and discuss what should be done in the future”
  • Process review cadence, where “the team reviews how they’ve been doing the work and how to improve”.

Glory to you, O Ron!