In an environment where user acceptance testing is required before the Increment can be put into production, a development manager proposes to have user acceptance testing done every third Sprint, because the feedback from the user acceptance tests are disrupting work in Sprints. Is this a good idea? (choose the best answer)

This proposal is not a good idea because it fundamentally undermines Scrum's empirical nature. By delaying User Acceptance Testing (UAT), the state of the Increment is no longer transparent; it is not potentially releasable at the end of each Sprint, creating a false sense of progress. This extends the feedback loop to three Sprints, which significantly increases the risk of building the wrong product and raises the cost of fixing defects discovered late in the process. Scrum is designed to shorten feedback loops to enable rapid inspection and adaptation, thereby reducing risk and maximizing value delivery. The manager's proposal does the opposite.

A. The Definition of Done would have to be weakened to accommodate this, but the core issue is that the practice itself is flawed and contradicts Scrum principles, regardless of what the DoD says.
C. While the Scrum Team is self-managing, this authority should be used to improve their process within the Scrum framework, not to violate its core principles of transparency and frequent feedback.
D. Feedback from users is not a "disruption" to be avoided; it is a critical component of the empirical process that allows the team to inspect and adapt. Shielding the team from feedback creates risk.

1. The Scrum Guide (2020):

On Empiricism and Transparency: "Scrum is founded on empiricism... Artifacts that have low transparency can lead to decisions that diminish value and increase risk. Transparency enables inspection." (The Scrum Guide, 2020, p. 3). Delaying UAT reduces the transparency of the Increment's true state.

On the Increment: "The moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born... To provide value, the Increment must be usable." (The Scrum Guide, 2020, p. 10). If UAT is required for usability or release, an Increment without it is not truly "Done."

2. Peer-Reviewed Academic Publication:

Dingsøyr, T., Nerur, S., Balijepally, V., & Moe, N. B. (2012). A decade of agile methodologies: Towards explaining agile software development. Journal of Systems and Software, 85(6), 1213-1221. This review of agile methodologies emphasizes that "Frequent delivery of software enables fast feedback from customers and users" (p. 1215). Delaying feedback from every Sprint to every third Sprint is a direct contradiction of this foundational agile principle. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2012.02.033