Product Goal
The Product Goal describes the future state of the product. It’s a “commitment” for the Product Backlog meaning that it is meant to provide focus for the Scrum Team and a target against which progress can be measured.
There is no specific format for the Product Goal or indication of how long the planning horizon is for a Product Goal. What Scrum does specify is that there is only one Product Goal at a time and it’s either achieved or abandoned before starting the next one.
To understand this more fully, we have to consider the broader context in which Scrum and the
Product Goal live. Organizations typically choose to create or maintain products based on their business strategy. This strategy often leads to the creation of a very high-level product vision. This is often an aspirational vision of what the product could be and customer problems it could solve. This kind of vision can be very motivating for teams, however it can sometimes be difficult for Scrum Team members to comprehend how they can contribute to this vision.
To help with this, the Product Goal is a concrete, actionable, measurable objective. It serves as a bridge between the product vision and the Sprint Goals. It’s a step toward the vision that is well enough defined that the team can use it to plan and evaluate their progress toward that vision.
The Product Goal provides context for the Product Backlog. Scrum Teams create Product Backlog items that will fulfill the Product Goal and use Sprints and Sprint Goals to bring them incrementally closer to achieving the goal. Once achieved, the team formulates a new Product Goal that will bring them closer to realizing the product vision.
Sometimes new information comes to the surface resulting in the team abandoning or reformulating their Product Goal. This isn’t a failure, but a natural consequence of incremental and experimental development.
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