The Definition of Done is a formal description of the state of the Increment when it meets the quality required — and it is not negotiable per item.
Ask five people on a team whether something is done and you can get five answers.
The Definition of Done exists to make that impossible.
The Scrum Guide calls it a formal description of the state of the Increment when it
meets the quality measures required for the product. And it draws a hard line: the
moment a Product Backlog item meets the Definition of Done, an Increment is born.
What it is for
- It creates transparency. Everyone shares the same understanding of what work
was completed. - It gates the Increment. Work that does not meet it cannot be released, and
cannot be presented at the Sprint Review. - It shapes selection. During Planning, the Developers select only what they
believe they can bring to Done inside the Sprint.
Writing one
Keep it short enough to remember and specific enough to check. A first version might
be three or four lines. What matters is that each line is verifiable: someone
other than the author can look and say yes or no.
- ❌ “Good quality” · ✅ “Reviewed by someone who did not write it”
- ❌ “Tested” · ✅ “Runs end to end on a clean machine”
- ❌ “Documented” · ✅ “A person who was not involved can use it from the written instructions alone”
Definition of Done vs acceptance criteria
They are different things and both are needed. The Definition of Done applies
to everything — it is the bar for the product. Acceptance criteria are specific
to one item: what makes this particular story correct.
An item can meet its acceptance criteria and still not be Done, because Done includes
things no single story mentions.
It is expected to get stricter
A team that has been running a while and has never changed its Definition of Done has
almost certainly stopped inspecting it. As capability grows, the bar rises.
In Agile Together
The Completed list on your board is the practical expression of it: a card gets there when it meets the bar, and that is what KR1 counts.
Next
Next: the Sprint Review — inspecting the Increment with the people it is for.
Agile Together is a free course. The package — scripts plus a portable Python — is a single download: get the course package. You install nothing.
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