What are DoD and DoR in Scrum?
Definition of Done (DoD) and Definition of Ready (DoR) are important — and too often misunderstood— concepts in Scrum. Let’s clarify what they are…
DoD = Definition of Done
The DoD is usually a short document in the form of a checklist, that defines when a product backlog item (i.e. user story) is considered “done”. It has various rationales and various ways to explain it:
- You need a common definition of what “done” (= “this user story is finished”) means. Otherwise it will mean something else for every person on the team.
- All your non-functional requirements reside in the DoD.
- A general list of acceptance criteria to be added to every story’s specific acceptance criteria.
- Many improvements you find in your retrospectives end up in the DoD.
Most teams start with no or a very simple DoD. They then add to the DoD after each sprint as needed. Tip: Don’t paralyze yourself with an excessive DoD! But keep in mind: “done” in an agile project means “no more work needs to be done before shipping”. So if someone says “the feature is done, but it only needs to be integrated, tested, deployed, …” it would NOT be considered “done” in an agile sense!
