The Art of Agile Development, 2nd Edition

“Done Done”

AUDIENCE

Whole Team

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

SOME DONE

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

Valentina 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 triumphantly to look at Shirley. “It only took me half a day, too.”

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

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

“Okay,” Shirley 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 specifically for this feature. I’m going to deploy the new build on their test bed so they can play with it.”

Valentina frowns. “Well, I wouldn’t show it to anybody yet. I haven’t tested it. And you can’t deploy it anywhere—I haven’t updated the deploy script or the migration tool.”

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

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

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

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

Wouldn’t be nice if, once you finished ...