I really like the concept! As you wrote, it puts a focus on actually delivering value to the product. As long as things are unmerged (aka "I am done, it just needs to be reviewed") they have nearly as little value as if they were not started at all. Changing the mindset to see how the team can get to merge something ist the right thing to do. As often, this rule makes an underlying problem visible, but it does not cause the problem.
As with most rules, I wouldn't be dogmatic about it though. If there is a good reason to break it, people should do it, but they should also be able to explain why. (And "I needed to do another task" is not the right answer here ;) )
My last team used this rule and even though it caused some frustration for developers it really put the focus on delivering code. I definitely agree with you there are some cases to break it. Some obvious times I have seen it broken were much of the team was out of the office so no one to do code reviews. Their 2 PRs were so small (a few lines or less) that it made sense at the time for them to take on another task while they waited for code reviews.
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I really like the concept! As you wrote, it puts a focus on actually delivering value to the product. As long as things are unmerged (aka "I am done, it just needs to be reviewed") they have nearly as little value as if they were not started at all. Changing the mindset to see how the team can get to merge something ist the right thing to do. As often, this rule makes an underlying problem visible, but it does not cause the problem.
As with most rules, I wouldn't be dogmatic about it though. If there is a good reason to break it, people should do it, but they should also be able to explain why. (And "I needed to do another task" is not the right answer here ;) )
Thanks Philip,
My last team used this rule and even though it caused some frustration for developers it really put the focus on delivering code. I definitely agree with you there are some cases to break it. Some obvious times I have seen it broken were much of the team was out of the office so no one to do code reviews. Their 2 PRs were so small (a few lines or less) that it made sense at the time for them to take on another task while they waited for code reviews.