The ‘Definition of Done’ (DoD) is a checklist of all the activities that must be completed for a Product Backlog Item (PBI) before it can be considered ‘Done’ and is fit for review by the WIDER stakeholder community and potentially released to the live environment; the DoD is a key artefact for Product Development quality control.

The DoD is assembled and agreed by the Product Owner (PO) and the Development Team members.

Potential Problems with initial DoD

There is a possibility that the Team develop a minimalist DoD and submit it to the PO for approval; some PO will give it a cursory glance and approve it.

In such situations, as a Scrum Master, you should remind the PO that he/she is solely responsible for the value to be accrued from the Product Development and that he/she needs to understand each DoD element in case any have been forgotten or any are unnecessary; the best way to achieve this is for you to facilitate a DoD workshop with the PO and Development Team members.

Another problem with minimalist DoD is that they assume that small but significant steps in the development process will be done because ‘they are obvious’; they may be obvious in the ‘cold light of day’ but not so obvious in the ‘heat of development’; as a Scrum Master, you should encourage the rest of the Scrum Team to include more detail in the DoD than seems necessary; items can ALWAYS be taken out if they are felt to be redundant.

DoD Examples

The DoD for software development may include items such as:

• DETAILED REQUIREMENTS analysis done with appropriate business people
• UI and User Experience approved by the appropriate business person
• The system architecture conforms to organisational system constraints
• All code adheres to the coding standards 
• All PBI functionality has been Unit Tested and passed
• Full Regression Testing has been completed and passed
• User Acceptance Testing has been completed and passed
• All necessary documentation has been completed
• An actual DoD would probably add more detail to some of the elements.

The DoD for a PBI is usually peer-reviewed by another Team member that has not had significant input to the PBI development.

Given that Scrum is not just for software development, a DoD for a non-software product development, such as running an event, may look something like this for the PBI of ‘As the Invitations Coordinator, I need to send invitations to the event, so that we maximise attendance’:

• The list of invitees has been collated from the {xyz} customer list
• The list of invitees has been approved by the event PROJECT Manager
• The form of the invitation has been designed by the Marketing Dept
• The form of the invitation has been approved by the Marketing Director
• Invitee addresses have been updated

Once all the DoD items have passed their checks, the Invitations Coordinator is authorised to send out the invitations.