Agile — DoD / Definition of Done

Definition of Done is the laundry list of gateways or path through which every unit of independent developmental piece of work should traverse to generate a stable business value in due process of software development. DOD is valid for both Agile or Waterfall methodology. It is something similar to SDLC (software development life cycle).

Definition of Done is a checklist of the types of work that the team collectively needs to successfully complete before it can declare its work is potentially shippable.

• Acceptance criteria is a subset of DoD.
• DoD is wholistic as well as at capability level like — DoD of Product, DoD of Dev, DoD of QA, etc.
• DoD is a set of self governing and mutually reviewed and agreed upon guidelines that a team adheres to;
• DoD is at Feature level, at EPIC level and at Story level ( it varies for each of these category but underlying theme is same);

A DoD framework looks like —

• Product Level — Scope finalized, reviewed and closed; Design reviewed;
• Developers — Code Completed — Code refactored; Code in standard format; Code commented; Unit tested; Code checked-in; Code reviewed;
• Quality Assurance member/s — Test planning ,plan creation, automation & execution — Test cases checked-in; Test plan review Integration tested; Regression tested; Progression tested; Platform tested; (Zero) Known Defects Product tested and signed-off; Acceptance Criteria met ; UAT Sign-off;
• Release plan execution — Live on Production environment ( phase wise );

Above is an example of how I outlined a DoD framework for my projects. It is a collectively agreed upon set of checklist which when obeyed should allow minimal tech debts generated. If you liked the content, keep reading the space for more articles!