There are two questions you have to ask when considering shipping software:
- Can we ship?
- Should we ship?
“Should we ship?” is ultimately a business decision. Is it valuable to the business to put the latest features in the hands of the users right now? The product manager (PM) represents the business interests on the team and must own this decision.
However, the question “Can we ship?” is fundamentally an engineering question. Is the software in a working state? Are we confident it won’t fail in production? The goal of the XP engineers is to always — ALWAYS — have a “yes” answer to this question. A team that can’t ship, can’t learn. And the longer you’re not learning, the greater the risk that you’re wasting time and money building the wrong thing.
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