Releasable Vs Shippable

Is there a subtle difference between a Product Increment being "potentially releasable" vs "potentially shippable"

From a software development perspective, "potentially releasable" means it can be released to production but not necessarily used by the end user or customer. Hence, it is available in Production, but the functionality could be turned off. The Product Owner can make the decision if the functionality needs to be immediately available to the end user/customer.

"Potentially Shippable" in my opinion is like a market launch of the entire product.

For example, you can't ship the Windows OS to the customer in Increments, but once you ship it, you can release increments of functionality (like patches, updates etc)

In Scrum, the Development Team should be able to produce a "potentially releasable" and "Done" Increment atleast by the end of the Sprint

There are no standard definitions for "releasable" and "shippable".

Different people are going to use them differently. For example, I use "releasable" differently than Steve does. I use "releasable" to mean "ready for the next downstream activity from development". In my current environment, that often involves either a formal verification process or a formal user acceptance testing and validation process. I use "shippable" to mean "ready for production", meaning it's been verified and validated as necessary and it's ready for either deployment to or activation in the production environment. I'm sure other people out there use these words differently than Steve or I do, as well.

I think it's important to understand your audience, use the best possible terms, and define the words that you are using if there is room for confusion.

Is there a subtle difference between a Product Increment being "potentially releasable" vs "potentially shippable"

There may be a subtle difference, in that "potentially releasable" better indicates that zero work remains. "Potentially shippable" arguably falls short of this because some sort of notional packaging or addressing might remain before "Done" is achieved.

Below are my opinion points.

Potentially releasable – The product is of high quality, well tested and complete and ready for production deployment, which may be output of one sprint or more than one sprint

Potentially shippable : At the end of each sprint, we expect a potentially shippable increment which may be potentially releasable if it satisfies production criteria or it can be passed to next sprint/downstream teams

Thank you all. I gather these 2 terms ideally should not be used interchangeably.