When is 'Done' actually done in Scrum/ Agile

Owais Mughal

July 5, 2020

One of the most debatable and discussed upon item in Scrum/Agile framework is the definition of 'Done.'

I've witnessed discussions where what is considered as 'done' or 'not done' has been debated to no end and people have come out more confused than ever. Now, what I've seen work well over the years is that instead of looking for a universal definition of 'done,' a Scrum team or a company as a whole can reach a consensus definition of what will 'done' mean in their particular product sense. As long as the definition remains transparent to all stake holders, it works. This definition can be updated for the next product but the key is consensus and transparency at both scrum team and company level.

If there are more than one scrum teams working on the same product then it is also very important that all of them have same understanding of 'Done.'

There are ofcourse some fundamental criteria of product 'increment' which must be fulfilled by the definition of 'done.' That minimum and fundamental criteria is to produce after every sprint, a working increment that is 'useable' and could potentially be shown to the customer.

Whether an increment is indeed released and shown to a customer or not is the prerogative of the Product Owner. When a Product Owner decides that product has got enough features that are 'done' and it is sufficient to release the increment and to show to a customer, it becomes what we call a Minimum Viable Product (MVP.)

Another good practice for scrum team and product owner to reach 'done' stage successfully is to pick only those items from the Product Backlog Items (PBIs) that can actually be completed in a sprint duration. These chosen items are called the Sprint Backlog. I've seen teams going overly optimistic and picking up more than what can be 'done' within a sprint and thus creating a technical debt which had to be cleared later in a 'clean up' or a 'mopping' sprint.

To conclude, define 'done' at a scrum team level and keep it transparent to all stake holders across the company.

Each increment when it is 'done' is additive to previous increment. When a 'done' increment is tested, it is tested together with all the previous increments and this cycle continues until the final product is 'done' and released.