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Note that we have some Incomplete Pages That Require Work on this site:-)
Note that we have some Incomplete Pages That Require Work on this site:-)
Or what is the “Definition of Done”?
One of the key ideas in Scrum and agile is to focus delivering valuable work (or more basically, running, tested features.) There are two key tools in understanding when something is complete:
The goal of the DoD is for every team to be able to say “we are potentially shippable at the end of every Sprint.” The idea is that we can then let the business make decisions on when to release based on the value provided as opposed to the current place we are in the release plan. While this is important from a business perspective, the real benefit of the “potentially shippable” standard is that at any given time we know the status of the software and have low risk going forward because we have done all the work required in order to release our software. At many organizations I have worked at most of the (legacy systems and) software is not in this state and so part of this discussion is that we need to be working to get closer and closer to this state.
The “Definition of Done” (DoD) helps us:
Teams are responsible for maintaining their quality standard. They do this by:
The Scrum Team's DoD will not be a purely team creation. Definitions of Done will be influenced by the business. The input will come in to support differing levels of need:
Teams have a known, public DoD. Teams are explicit both in being visible about their DoD (available on the Scrum Team's page). They are also transparent about the practice they use to ensure their Definition of Done is addressed. It is up to the team to determine their approach.
Example approaches we have seen include:
As said, the aim of this DoD is to ensure we are getting closer to “potentially shippable”. The DoD typically is created to cover most of the work that the team typically does. So if you are a company doing new feature or maintenance work, then your DoD would be created to match most of that work. Other DoD's might be required for other kinds of work:
The key thing for the DoD is that all the stakeholders understand what it means when the team says it is done so communication is a required part of the on-going work associated with the DoD.
Here is an example DoD for a team, for new product and on-going maintenance development work: