Deliverable vs. increment

Nader K. Rad, 2020-08-18

Every increment is a deliverable, but not every deliverable is an increment.

An increment of product is a meaningful, working version of it that has improvements or extra features compared to the previous version, and not just a random set of outputs.

For example, if I quickly publish a number of articles here and then go back and improve their content in a few rounds, each round would be a new increment. However, if I only publish the title of every article, then publish the first paragraph of every article, then the second paragraph, and so on, these deliverables won't be increments.

All projects have many deliverables during their lifecyle, but not every project can or does produce increments of its product before its finished.