Defining Done

By Barry Stern, Ph.D.

 For about the past six months, my newfound friend and colleague Russ has an out of office message that simply says "define done."  Easy for HIM to say. Pretty much impossible for me to do, even when I'm mowing the lawn.  In two words Russ has captured one component of my lifelong struggle. I've never been very good at finishing.  It’s rare that anything I touch really seems done. When I write a sentence I can always tweak it. Is the split infinitive bothering me today?  Why did it bother me yesterday but not today? Can it be said in a more parsimonious way?  My life and my career seem to exist in shades of gray.  I envy those decisive people who just seem to know when something is "finished".  Their world, so black and white, so clean.

Perhaps Russ' question is borne from his IT/software background.  I have been surfing the net and found that one possible definition of done in the world of agile software development is that "a feature is implemented, reviewed, and unit tested, but not necessarily documented". 

Ubiquitous communication options and the liquidity of words has made defining done even more challenging. When am I done with participating in the never-ending email thread du jour?  I want to be "first out" or "never in".  More pervasively,  I notice nobody "writes" formal communications any more.  Now we "craft" them, which yet somehow elevates to new heights of verbosity and self absorption.  We are drowning in a world of crafted bits.

What about HR professionals? How do we define done as we develop people? Do our definitions of done limit those who can fly so much higher?  Or place too many undeserving artificial ceilings on folks? Are we really taking the time to systematically identify their apogees?  Can we ever say that a person has been developed, reviewed and unit tested?

How do you "define done" in your work?  When you deftly design that onboarding  experience for your new employees?  When you develop your new competency model?  Do others agree it's done? How are your definitions of done in fact defining you and your body of work to yourself and others?

Rather arbitrarily, I guess I'll stop here.

Barry Stern Ph.D. is vice president, Consulting Services and Delivery for Development Dimensions International (DDI). Follow him on Twitter.

Comments

[Ed]

I'm a teacher and a learner. The more you learn, the more you want to learn. The more you inspire kids to learn, the more they want to learn. There are teachers who teach a topic and then have a test at 'the end' and think that's the end (done). But true learning has nothing to do with topics and tests . Our work is never 'done'.