Chapter 13. Keeping Defects in Check

Potentially shippable. You’ve heard this phrase before and you’ll hear it again. So what about defects then? Is a story potentially shippable if at the end of the sprint it has some defects that were left unaddressed? This then leads teams to wonder whether each project should have a sprint (or two) dedicated to fixing defects. How about a stabilization phase? After all, you need to reach the mythical code complete phase, right?

Defect management is one of the easiest things to forego on any agile project. After all, teams have been conditioned to address defects at the end of projects. Failing to deal with these defects on an ongoing basis, though, results only in low-quality software and the need to “build ...

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