Templates for Definition of Done and Definition of Ready
Guide for facilitating a workshop to define the checklists
There’s a question that usually pops-up in the engineering teams, and is about coming up with the Definition of Done (DoD) and the definition of Ready (DoR).
I’ve run several workshops with different formats and the one I found more useful is the following:
It can be used in digital format (in a Miro board for example) or in a white board.
The idea is in session discuss and agree in a workshop session on what are the different conditions the team needs to have in place to be in the same page when answering the questions of:
Are we ready to start?
Is this done?
The process looks like the following:
Each team member takes 5 minutes to think individually what is the minimum set of expectations to be matched
Each team member shares their checklist with the rest
The items that everyone agrees with are automatically set to the NOW section
The items were there’s no agreement, the team have a small discussion about if it’s not possible now or it shouldn’t be included at all. If it’s a good agreement but it’s not possible in the current status of the team it is added to next or later.
At the final of the session it’s reviewed that we have the right amount of items in the checklist
The risk of having too much or too little list
If the list of items falls short there’s a chance that we are missing something that could generate a friction afterwards. On the other side if we define too many items it could block the team to move forward as they are adding too much complexity to the process.
The *bonus idea* on this exercise is to find the balance on the amount of items in our checklist. There’s no-one that can tell you which one is the right amount, only the team and the environment.
If the environment requires a team that is driven by innovation, maybe you want to consider less constraints on the process, that means, less items on that list. In case the environment requires a team that prevents all the possible mistakes and oversees all the possible scenarios, then you should strive for more, and more detailed items on the list.
Do you need a set of items as a guidance?
Over time I collected some items you may find useful to add. This is just a set of ideas I’ve taken from other articles and personal experiences. Use them wisely.
For Definition of Done:
The code is complete and according to developers’ standards.
The code is refactored.
Technical Debt is removed.
Meet the acceptance criteria.
Code checked into the repository.
Tech Acceptance is passed
Unit tests are written and green.
Test coverage: __ %.
Pair programming.
Peer review.
Code merge and tagged.
Product Acceptance is passed
Deployed to the development environment.
Integration tests are written and green.
Deployed to the QA environment.
Bugs, improvements, and changes are done.
Changes were communicated and updated in the ticket description.
Configuration properties are updated for all environments
Regression tests.
Performance tests.
Approved by QA.
Deployed to UAT.
Reviewed and accepted by the Product Owner.
Reviewed and accepted by the customer or user(s).
Final approval in the Sprint Review or demo by the Product Owner and customer.
Deployed to production.
Production tests are successful.
Code is merged into develop and master branch
For Definition of Ready:
All necessary assets available
Team knows how to measure the impact of the Story/Task
Person who will accept the User Story is identified
Story is estimated
We know how to test the story
All related tickets are linked
Story can be finished as it's own and it's as granular as possible
All dependencies (internal and external) are known and addressed
Purpose of the ticket is clear (what and why) to all team members
the scope of the story is well defined
Tech Acceptance criteria defined (if necessary)
Also you may find interesting the Miro Template :)
If you want to know more about the Definition of Ready check the article and video from
Definition of Ready. Hate it or love it?. Also let me take the chance to recommend Maria’s videos in Agile State of Mind, she’s great explaining the content and giving examples.What are the formats you tried? Do you have other suggestions or items for your checklist?