"Hardening" sprints considered harmful

Some Scrum teams–whether formally or informally–have a recurring “hardening” sprint after every few regular sprints, in which they fix outstanding defects and make the system actually ready for delivery. This is a bad idea. Here’s why.

If you care about why you are “doing Agile,” you should care about the principles of Agile development, which include “early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.” Delivery. If you’re not continuously delivering software, you’re not Agile.

If you have legacy defects, which are any defects not tied to a current story, then those defects need to be made stories in their own right. If your current stories are implemented with defects, they are not done and you have no business considering them completed. If you haven’t integrated a pipeline from development to deployment, that is infrastructure! It’s not part of a sprint!

Make every sprint a “hardening sprint.” That way you always have a product to deliver. That way you are never wrong.