Scrum

What is Definition of Done?

Q: What is Definition of Done?

Definition of Done (DoD) is the team's formal agreement on what it means for an item to be "done" — tested, integrated, documented, deployed, whatever is relevant for the product. It is the shared quality bar that avoids the famous "done, but…". Every increment of a Sprint must meet the DoD to be considered delivered.

Definition of Done (DoD) is the team's formal agreement on what it means for an item to be "done" — tested, integrated, documented, deployed, whatever is relevant for the product. It is the shared quality bar that avoids the famous "done, but…". Every increment of a Sprint must meet the DoD to be considered delivered.

In practice

A team defines the DoD together and keeps it visible, usually as a checklist next to the board. Typical items: code reviewed, automated tests passing, CI green, documentation updated, deploy to staging or production, acceptance criteria validated by the PO. The DoD evolves: what was optional becomes mandatory as the team matures. In organizations with multiple teams on the same product, a shared DoD ensures consistency. K21's CSM course explores how to build realistic DoDs that raise quality without freezing delivery.

What happens when it is missing

Without an explicit DoD, "done" becomes opinion. The team delivers things that look like they work but are not tested, integrated or in production. Technical debt explodes, rework appears in future Sprints, and the velocity the business perceives is much higher than the real value-delivery velocity. In the end, releases ship with bugs, manual dependencies and the feeling that every release is a miracle.