Definition of Done

What is The Definition Of Done

In Scrum, "done" loosely means that a product feature is complete and can be demonstrated to stakeholders.

In the Agile context, the definition of done may differ from one team to the next according to their specific needs. This can lead to significant confusion unless a consistent definition is maintained across your organization, and it’s one of the reasons why understanding the definition of done is so crucial to the success of Agile methodology.

Why Is The Definition Of Done Important?

With scrum, organizations want to be able to predict their work requirements as closely as possible.

When the "definition of done" is not clearly defined or universal across a company, then as a team member, you may engage in inconsistent predictions on the quality and expected delivery time of your work, which can naturally upset throughput. Generally, all members of the scrum team must agree on the definition of “finished” prior to the beginning of a scrum cycle.

An example of your team’s definition might be the feature passing automated integration tests and manual acceptance tests. If a feature does not pass both, it won’t be considered “done” and ready for demonstration.

How Can GoRetro Help Your Team Reach Their Definition Of Done?

GoRetro is an intuitive and productive retro tool built to be used across your development teams. It helps all staff communicate about scrum successes, scrum failures, and how you can improve future sprints and collaboration both before and during hand-offs.

To reach a unified definition of done within your team, it's important to have something that aids you in reflecting back after each iteration. GoRetro’s intuitive features perfectly combine with your daily standup meetings:

Teams

You can create a team for each scrum feature, so the person who leads the standup meeting can have their own customized report to filter through.

Unlimited Retro Boards

Set up as many retrospectives as you need for people to contribute and reflect. You can even invite customers and other stakeholders to participate in the retro so that everyone is on the same page.

Action Items

GoRetro's action item feature helps you clearly define what needs to be done in the next iteration. As a Scrum Master, you can track your team's progress in completing action items in each sprint for better reflection in future retrospectives.

Board Customization

You can add descriptions, tags, and comments to the team boards which you can then filter through. For example, if a person is looking for problems encountered during the sprint, they can simply add "Problem" as a tag to see everyone's progress in solving them.

Card Types

Depending on your level of planning, you can set the card type to either discussion or action. This way, you can start all discussions with an informal "noise" round where everyone is allowed to contribute their predictions and expectations for future sprints.

Conclusion

Achieving the definition of done is a core concept in the scrum framework. More than trying to get your products finished and ticked off the list, “done” is about trying to predict your work and define when a feature is finished in a way that the whole team understands.

GoRetro helps you correctly reach the definition of done by providing a retro board that can be used as a tool for collaboration. With this, everyone from the scrum team and other stakeholders are kept up to date with what's going on in each sprint.

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