Definition of Done
Definition of Done (DoD) is a team-wide checklist that every story must satisfy before being marked complete — typical entries include: code reviewed, tests passing, documentation updated, deployed to staging, AC verified. DoD is team-specific and explicit so 'done' isn't ambiguous.
Without an explicit DoD, every story is done when the engineer who wrote it says it's done — which is usually before tests, documentation, or deploy. A good DoD is short (5-8 items), behaviour-focused (not 'code committed' but 'merged to main and deployed to staging'), and revised quarterly. Anti-patterns: a 30-item DoD nobody reads; a DoD that includes architecture quality (use ADRs for that instead); a DoD treated as paperwork.
Long-form posts that explore definition of done in depth — when to use it, common failure modes, how AI helps.
- How AI writes acceptance criteria (and where it fails)The honest map of where AI is dramatically better than humans at writing acceptance criteria — and the five places it confidently writes garbage. Plus the prompts that work.10 min read
- Replacing Jira: a 30-day playbookThe honest 30-day playbook for moving off Jira. Four phases — audit, parallel run, cutover, decommission — plus the three patterns where this doesn't work.11 min read
- The connected delivery graph: one source of truth from PRD to prodMost teams ship software with five tools that don't talk to each other. The friction isn't any individual tool — it's the missing graph between them. This is the case for one connected graph.9 min read
Related terms
- Acceptance criteria
Acceptance criteria are the conditions a story must satisfy to be considered complete — testable, bounded statements describing what the system does.
- Gherkin
Gherkin is a structured plain-English DSL for writing executable acceptance tests, using the Given / When / Then format.
- Sprint goals
A sprint goal is a one-sentence outcome the team commits to delivering in the sprint — not a list of stories, but the customer or business outcome those stories produce.