Show What’s Done but Not Yet Released

Some teams have inventory (WIP): they have completed features hiding behind flags. (See ​How Do I Release Partially Complete Feature Sets?​.) One of the problems with that approach is that the team can create inventory of not-yet-released work.

Cards on the wall are an effective way to show what’s done but not yet released. The sheer number of cards helps everyone—the team, the product owner, the sponsors/managers/customers—see what’s going on. In the board shown in the figure, the columns Waiting for Release, Date Done, Why Not Released, and Anticipated Release answer the questions people might have about the WIP. The remaining column, Released Since Last Meeting, updates the status from the last time people looked at the team’s output.

You might wonder why the Anticipated Release column does not have a full complement of cards. That’s because this team doesn’t know when it will have enough of the given feature sets done to know when it can release. The product owner has the team building walking skeletons in different areas of the product. The skeletons are enough to show people inside the organization, but the skeleton functionality is not enough for the customers to use.

The discussion about this WIP is much more important than the WIP itself. Sure, I would prefer if there were no WIP, if the team could release all the features whenever they were done. However, if the customers won’t adopt the new functionality because it’s not “enough,” it’s best to make that problem transparent.