What is Undone Department?
“Undone department—This department, ideally, does not exist.
Unfortunately, sometimes the teams are not yet able to create a true shippable increment every Sprint. This is reflected by their “Definition of Done” not being equal to “Potentially Shippable.” The difference between them is called Undone Work. Someone needs to do this Undone Work, and a common “solution” is to create separate groups that pick up the “undone work”—the undone department. More on this in the Definition of Done chapter.
Undone departments such as test, QA, architecture, or business analysis groups should never exist in the smaller LeSS framework groups; rather they should be integrated into the teams from the start. On the other hand, we unfortunately still frequently see an operations or production undone department in LeSS adoptions, as they often cross organizational boundaries.
A goal in every LeSS adoption is to remove the undone department. How long will this take? The answer is highly dependent on how fast the organization improves its capability.” – from the 3rd LeSS book (Large Scale Scrum: More with LeSS)