The Art of Agile Development

“Done Done”

Note

Whole Team

We’re done when we’re production-ready.

“Hey, Liz!” Rebecca sticks her head into Liz’s office. “Did you finish that new feature yet?”

Liz nods. “Hold on a sec,” she says, without pausing in her typing. A flurry of keystrokes crescendos and then ends with a flourish. “Done!” She swivels around to look at Rebecca. “It only took me half a day, too.”

“Wow, that’s impressive,” says Rebecca. “We figured it would take at least a day, probably two. Can I look at it now?”

“Well, not quite,” says Liz. “I haven’t integrated the new code yet.”

“OK,” Rebecca says. “But once you do that, I can look at it, right? I’m eager to show it to our new clients. They picked us precisely because of this feature. I’m going to install the new build on their test bed so they can play with it.”

Liz frowns. “Well, I wouldn’t show it to anybody. I haven’t tested it yet. And you can’t install it anywhere—I haven’t updated the installer or the database schema generator.”

“I don’t understand,” Rebecca grumbles. “I thought you said you were done!”

“I am,” insists Liz. “I finished coding just as you walked in. Here, I’ll show you.”

“No, no, I don’t need to see the code,” Rebecca says. “I need to be able to show this to our customers. I need it to be finished. Really finished.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” says Liz. “This feature is done—it’s all coded up. It’s just not done done. Give me a few more days.”

Production-Ready Software

Important

You should able to deploy the software at the end of any iteration. ...