Continuous Improvement

A philosophy and practice of making small, incremental improvements to processes, products, and workflows on an ongoing basis rather than through large, infrequent overhauls. In agile and Scrum contexts, continuous improvement is embedded in the sprint retrospective: every sprint the team identifies one or two specific changes to how they work and commits to implementing them in the next sprint. This creates a feedback loop of inspect-and-adapt that compounds over time. Continuous improvement recognizes that perfection is never achieved but that systematic iteration toward better ways of working delivers lasting organizational value. It is closely related to the Japanese concept of Kaizen.