Scrum — Two approaches to expand the Definition of Done
Two different ways to reach the same goal
Two different ways to reach the same goal
In this post, we’ll take a look at two teams who are both seeking to expand the Definition of Done. Right now, both teams have full control of deployment as far as the integration environments. This enables the team to routinely demo their latest increment of working software to stakeholders, which is already an effective way to inspect the increment and adapt.
However, both teams now want to make an important change. They would like to be able to deploy to production inside a Sprint. This would allow stakeholders to work with the increment and as a result brings even better feedback. To achieve this several things need to be in place that aren’t fully there yet:
the team does not yet have the skills or the required tools or permissions to deploy to production.
they need to achieve full test automation
they need to achieve automated deployment
they need to streamline the change approval process
Only when all of this is done the teams will be able to have deployment to production as part of the “Definition of Done”. There’s truly a lot of time and effort needed to achieve this.
In order to get started on this plan, the teams have both already reached a great milestone: they can consistently deploy to an environment just below production: pre-production. Both teams wish to expand the Definition of Done (DoD) now. But both decided to do this in a different way.
Team 1 — expand DoD to reflect current situation
Team 1 is the team that wants to reflect the current state. They are consistent in reaching pre-production with their items every Sprint. This is why they expand the DoD to include deployment on pre-production.
They continue to work on the remaining improvements to bring deployment to production within the two weeks. But only when they actually are consistently deploying to production within two weeks they will extend the DoD to include deployment to production.
They will appear to be the slower team, but they will deliver what they promise.
Team 2 — expand the DoD to clarify their issues
Team 2 wants to force things. They decided to expand their DoD to include deployment to production. They know they will not get their items to “Done” within two weeks, but they wish to amplify this. They want to show the organisation where they feel their pain. They believe this will work as a forcing function. They expect that it will put the required improvements higher on the agenda.
Closing thoughts
Both teams decided to tackle this topic differently. It is very interesting to see which team brings most in the quest to expand the Definition of Done to include deployment to production. To be continued…
Did you like the article? Then it would be awesome if you’d clap 👏🏻. I am also very keen to learn what you think about this topic.
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