Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
A basic tenet of Agile software is to deliver Value to the business. The challenge is to do this in the face of continuously changing priorities and/or requirements.
Part of what causes the priorities or requirements to change is a basic truth in psychology: it’s easier to see what is in front of you than it is to operate mentally on a figment of your imagination. The more concrete things become, the more the definition seems to change.
What this also means is that the more frequently you deliver something that works, the faster the business gets to see the truth of what they had asked for. This allows them to evaluate it in a concrete way, and thereby be empowered to offer meaningful feedback on it.
But delivering something that ‘works’ is only half of the equation. What works should be something that adds value. Time spent working on something that no one will use is time wasted. Delivering something that costs more to create than it will earn or save for the company is also time wasted. There may come a point in the project where there is still plenty to work on, but none of it adds enough value to be worth the investment. A good product owner will recognize that point, and the project will end. A good team will help identify when that point is reached.
When breaking down the work that is to be done, keep this in mind. If it doesn’t add value by itself, don’t deliver it by itself. If something else adds more value, do that first. But don’t fall into the trap of needing to deliver everything all at once. Really, all ‘features’ are not created equal.