Done

[duhn]

Definition of Done

A piece of work is “Done” when it satisfies the (pre-existing) agreement between Stakeholders and Developers about what it takes for the work to be complete;

“Done” for a Story usually consists of Acceptance Criteria (which could be a TimeBox), a Standard of Care, and General Agreements;

A Software Increment is “Done” when “the increment consists of thoroughly tested, well-structured, and well-written code that has been built into an executable and that the user operation of the functionality is documented… This is the definition of a ”Done” increment.” (per Ken Schwaber, Agile Project Management with Scrum, Microsoft Press, 2004, pg. 12). The concept of “Done” has often been extended to Epics, Sprints, Releases, and so on…(Compare to UnDone)

See:

Acceptance-Based Story, A Story whose Acceptance Criteria does not include a Time-Box; the Time an Acceptance-Based Story takes is a byproduct of getting to “Done.” 
Time-Boxed Story, Time-Boxed Stories have their Acceptance Criteria (at least partially) defined by a time-box, and the actual Results produced are limited to what can be completed (using the Story’s Standard of...
Acceptance Criteria, The description of the objective criteria the Team will use to determine whether or not a Story achieves the Value it represents; the part of “Done” that is separate from...
Standard of Care, The Standard of Care is the part of “Done” that describes the objective criteria the Team uses to determine whether or not they used the prudence, caution, processes, and procedures...
General Agreement, The Part of a Story’s definition of “Done” that contains information about which SMEs will be involved, who will be the Story Coordinator, what is ‘out of scope’ for the...
UnDone The phrase “UnDone work” is often used to describe the work needed to move something from “Done” to Releasable; in other words, it is work that maybe should have been...

Examples

The Story’s Agreement can be quite specific about what "Done" means; but it should be silent on how it should be done. The Team owns its work – Team Members should not be micromanaged – but the Agreements can constrain the work in order to maintain quality. In other words, one shouldn’t micromanage the People, but it’s ok to micromanage the Product.

Professionals use a Standard of Care (SoC) + Professionals clarify Acceptance Criteria (AC) + Professionals make General Agreements (GA) + Professionals do their Due Diligence (DD) + Professionals work well with others’ Team Norms (TN) = Professionals meet a Definition of Done (DoD). DoD = (SoC + GA + TN + AC) + DD

The Team agreed that the Story would be time-boxed; that that they will be "Done" when a certain amount of time has passed - no matter what the actual result is at that time.

External Sources

An Equation For Understanding 'Done'

The Done White Paper

Cite This Term

"Done" ScrumDictionary.com. Accessed Apr 18, 2024. https://scrumdictionary.com/term/done/.