The Definition of Done (DoD) is the contract between the development team and stakeholders about what "complete" means. A weak DoD produces technical debt. A missing DoD produces unpredictable releases. A well-constructed DoD is one of the highest-leverage quality tools a Scrum team has.
What the DoD Is (and Is Not)
The DoD is not acceptance criteria — those are story-specific. The DoD is a team-level standard applying to every increment. If a story passes acceptance criteria but fails the DoD, it is not done.
A Starter DoD for Software Teams
- Code reviewed by at least one peer, comments resolved
- Unit tests written and passing (minimum 80% coverage on new code)
- Integration tests passing in CI pipeline
- No known critical or high-severity bugs introduced
- Documentation updated (API docs, Confluence, README as applicable)
- Feature deployed to staging environment
- Acceptance criteria verified by Product Owner
- No merge conflicts in main branch
DoD Maturity Levels
| Level | DoD Items |
|---|---|
| Level 1 (Basic) | Code reviewed, tests pass, PO accepted |
| Level 2 (Quality) | + Security scan clean, test coverage threshold, performance tested |
| Level 3 (DevOps) | + Automated deployment, feature flag configured, monitoring alert set up |
| Level 4 (Enterprise) | + Accessibility audit, compliance check, runbook updated, rollback verified |
Common Mistakes
- Too aspirational: Start achievable and raise the bar in retrospectives
- Not enforced: The SM's job is to prevent stories being counted as done when they do not meet the DoD — even under sprint-end pressure
- Never updated: Review the DoD quarterly at minimum as team capability improves
- DoD vs acceptance criteria confusion: Acceptance criteria belong to the story; DoD belongs to the team
DoD at Programme Level (SAFe)
In SAFe, team-level and programme-level DoDs coexist. The programme DoD defines what must be true for a feature to be accepted at PI level — integration testing across teams, end-to-end scenario coverage, NFRs verified. RTEs and Product Managers own the programme DoD; Scrum Masters own the team-level DoD.
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