Mike Lyons explains the concept of a team's "definition of done" (DoD): a visible checklist of criteria a user story must meet before being called done. Examples given include peer review, passing acceptance/regression/user tests, completed documentation, and no increase in technical debt. He emphasizes teams must agree whether "done" means deployed to production or merely releasable in a lower-level environment.
Definition of done gives us a visible list of all the things that stories need to meet before we'll call them done. So what are some examples of definition of done? Let's take a look at a few here. The story we're working on has been peer reviewed. All of our acceptance tests have passed. Our regression tests have passed. We passed our user acceptance test. Documentation is completed. We have not increased our technical debt. Look, it's important for you and your team to know do we mean done is in production? This is a big one. I meet with teams all the time and done is, you know, it's in a lower level environment. Done is, it's being tested. So does done mean software in production or software potentially releasable software in a lower level staging environment? You decide. My point is understand what definition of done is. As a team.
