Scrum Definition of Done. Examples Included

Reflection Questions

• What are your goals as you learn about Scrum?
• What pain points is your team experiencing when it come to delivering fully finished?
• If you could have your team make 3 definition of done commitments right now, what would they be?

If you are interested in learning Scrum or teaching it to your team, you'll want to check out Everyday Scrum. It's a guide for everyday people to learn Scrum and is written intentionally to be accessible to those practicing Scrum outside the software development space.

If you want to explore more Scrum related content, I have lot's of Agile and Scrum posts for you and I've highlighted a few of them below.

Scrum Basics

• Why Use Scrum?
• What Is The Definition Of Scrum?
• What Are The Pros & Cons Of Scrum?
• Scrum: Expectations Vs. Reality
• Is Scrum Hard To Learn?
• How To Align The Scrum Values With Your Organizational Culture
• What's the difference between iterative and incremental development?
• Learn To Forecast Progress In Scrum
• What Is The Definition Of Done In Scrum?

Scrum Roles

• What is a Scrum Product Owner?
• What does a Product Owner do each day?
• Getting Certified as a Product Owner
• What is a Scrum Master?
• What does a Scrum Master do each day?
• Getting Certified as a Scrum Master
• Can The Scrum Master And Product Owner Be The Same Person
• How Is A Scrum Master Different Than A Project Manager?

Scrum Books

• Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time
• The Scrum Fieldbook: A Master Class on Accelerating Performance, Getting Results, and Defining the Future

We all want to get stuff done and you and your team want to be confident that you're going to consistently deliver quality work. But when there's not a clear finish line for whether or not something's done, teams get frustrated and they have doubts about the progress they're making. So how do we solve that problem? Well, let me introduce you to the definition of done. As I have coached teams to adopt agile methodologies.

I often encourage them to stop starting and start finishing. Finishing is critical to delivering value, and the definition of done is an essential ingredient to finishing. But I've also been on teams where finishing where the finishing details were just being overlooked. And by the time you discover, oh, this didn't get done or didn't get fully finished or delivered, the person who did it might not still be on the team and they're gone.

And now that creates a lot of painful duplicate work for those who are still there. So the definition of done is here to help us. Well, what is it? The definition of done is really it's just an element in Scrum that clarifies when work is complete. It outlines the criteria for any work to be considered done. And this criteria is broad and flexible enough that it can be applied to all the items in the backlog.

But yet it's concrete and specific enough. So it's really clear whether that criteria has been met. There's only one definition of done for the whole team so that everyone means the same thing when they say done. Now, if you have multiple teams working on the same project, those teams should also have a common definition of done. Okay, but where does it come from?

Where do we find our definition of done? I think it's best for the team to write the definition of done collaboratively because each person brings a unique perspective and writing together can create a more holistic definition and greater ownership of what you end up creating. Now let's dig a little deeper and look at what are some of the critical elements of the definition of done.

So I'm going to walk through a couple categories here. Quality check. Were unit test run did the design go through critique? Feedback. Did we receive feedback from the stakeholders or the product owner or the user? Validate. Did it meet the goals of the user story? If you don't know what a user story is, check a link in the description.

I'll cover that there. Same with acceptance criteria, which falls in the next category of verify. Did we meet the criteria of the features requested? Did we keep within the constraints that we were given? Then there's some admin that's another category where the file is checked and uploaded to the correct place. Acceptance. Did the stakeholder or product owner formally accept the work that we delivered? And then wrap up.

Did we send an invoice or a survey for feedback? Okay, so those are some of the categories to consider, but your definition of done needs to be a specific application of those categories to your work. But let's look now at a quick example of a definition of done for a team doing creative work, and I'll link some more examples in the description down below.

But let's walk through this. Okay. Here is our definition of done. User tests were performed and results were shared with the client. At least one demo was performed during the sprint. For the client. The acceptance criteria was met, the assets were delivered to the client. The assets and design files were archived to the proper folder. The product owner accepted all the deliverables.

The invoice was submitted, the customer survey was sent and an evaluation was scheduled. Okay. Do you see how specific it is? It's clear. It's brief. People can know, Hey, did I do that or not? But it's not so long and so wordy that there's a lot of friction to using it. So how do you create your own definition of done?

So here's three actionable steps. Make a list of what's in your definition. Do this as a team, and I've linked a helpful template and the description using those categories that I just mentioned. Then second step is integrated into your workflow. Create checklists or dependencies within your project to ensure that it's gone through all the steps of the definition of done before something can really be marked complete.

And then the third step is really just evaluate and adapt. You're going to end up tweaking your definition. Then, no matter how good you do writing that first one, you're going to change it as time goes on. And so listen, for problems that could be solved with maybe a clearer or more specific definition of done. Imagine knowing everything that you marked done is truly done.

Feels nice, right? Collaboration goes up as the team trusts one another more with what they're getting done. Productivity goes up because you're pushing more things across the finish line. Let's not keep living with these avoidable errors. Missed Work Rework Delays Create a definition of done for your team today along with the template I've linked a lot of other articles that give more examples of a definition of done and include even a FAQ for a definition of done.

So hope you find that helpful is down to description with a couple of other resources. If you have any questions, just throw those in the comments and would love to engage there and don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you found this video helpful. Thanks. See you next time.

‍