Many developers treat a delivery as a chance to say, “Here’s the software you asked for,” but they should be saying, “How’s this version?” This is why iterative development is so useful: It gives the business folks and developers numerous opportunities to refine their ideas and discover the system’s hidden potential. If we view deliverables as nouns, we tend to ship them and run. But if we treat a deliverable as a verb – as something we do to help improve the way we add value to the business – we encourage communication, cooperation, and feedback between developers and customers.

— Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt, Verbing the Noun, IEEE Software, July/August 2003.