Background

Undone infrastructure work is work that is not completed within an iteration but is required to be completed for other work in that iteration to be made releasable.

Experience

Iteration demos for a Content Management System (CMS)-driven web site were repeatedly conducted without a working CMS integrated. To the customer, the web site appeared to be coming together well but behind-the-scenes, CMS integration was not progressing due to lack of information and technical difficulties. The lack of CMS integration represented a major project risk that threatened the content production schedule and timely delivery of the project.

Smells

• Iteration demos that avoid showing full, end-to-end user workflows.
• Team members making excuses in demos.
• Core infrastructure work remaining undone on the product backlog or not being completed for multiple iterations.

Causes

• The team feels pressure from the customer to deliver as many features as possible.
• The team feels insecure about revealing to the customer the incompleteness or lack of quality of their work.
• The team feels insecure about admitting that they lack expertise to solve certain problems.

Consequences

• The team works a lot of overtime as it attempts to catch up on undone work.
• The team fails to release on time.
• The quality of the product is compromised.

Guidance

Leaving difficult or time-consuming infrastructure work undone is shortsighted. It may contribute to setting unrealistic expectations, increasing risk and leaving the team with a difficult or overwhelming problem later in the release cycle. Therefore, build all necessary infrastructure incrementally to support the features in the iteration. If impediments prevent necessary infrastructure from being delivered with the features that require it, cease building new features until the infrastructure impediments are resolved.

If you have had a similar experience or have a different perspective on this, please post a comment below.