About Definition of Done (DoD)

Currently, i am reading Ilan Goldsteins fantastic book Scrum Shortcuts Without Cutting Corners which is full of practical suggestion that can directly be applied to your daily work. On today's morning walk i thought about Shortcut 11: Developing the Definition of Done.

Ilan Goldstein points out that there cannot be any one standard definition of done (DoD) because it inevitably evolves. However, for beginners he suggests some typical DoDs. As a general rule, you should develop DoDs on different levels, e.g. one for Release, User Story and Task. An example DoD for level Task might be:

• Code has been unit-tested.
• Code has been peer reviewed (if continual pair programming isn't being conducted) to ensure coding standards are met.
• Code has been checked into source control with clear check-in comments for traceability
• Checked-in code doesn't break the build (see Shortcut 18).
• The task board has been updated and remaining time for the task = 0 (see Shortcut 21)

You can find the book website including TOC and sample chapters at Scrum Shortcuts Without Cutting Corners