What Is Definition of Done?

What does Definition of Done mean?

A Definition of Done is a formal description of the state an Increment must reach to meet the quality measures required for a product, creating a shared target the whole team measures progress against. Per Scrum.org, it creates transparency by giving everyone a common understanding of the standards required for work to count as done, and once it is met, the Increment can be considered finished and released. Sometimes an organization sets a baseline Definition of Done that every team must follow at minimum, with each team free to add further standards specific to its own product.

Without a shared Definition of Done, "done" quietly becomes whatever the person doing the work believes it means, which is exactly the ambiguity the concept exists to remove.

Why Definition of Done matters for product managers

Beyond Agile treats an unclear or unenforced Definition of Done as one of the concrete mechanisms behind team dysfunction, not just an abstract Scrum artifact. In the bootcamp's own practical challenge, a QA lead flags repeatedly that stories marked "Done" in the tracker clearly are not, and nothing changes after being raised three times in retrospectives, which the bootcamp frames as a process failure with a name and a fix, not an unavoidable cost of moving fast.

The bootcamp also extends the concept into AI assisted work through its sibling bootcamp, Building with Claude Code, which treats a clear, objective Definition of Done as essential once an AI agent, not just a human, is the one doing the building.

Definition of Done example

Building with Claude Code's certification quiz makes the connection explicit for AI coding agents: done is defined as an objective state set by pre-established acceptance criteria and passing tests, not the agent's own confidence level in its output. A "Skill" in that bootcamp's own framework is described as an executable document that packages workflow steps, known pitfalls, quality gates, and a Definition of Done for recurring work, so an agent has the same explicit target a human teammate would need.

Applied back in Beyond Agile's own scenario, the fix for stories marked "Done" that are not actually done is the same fix in either case: write the Definition of Done down explicitly, make it checkable rather than a feeling, and hold every piece of work, human or AI generated, to it before it counts as complete.

How Builders Camp teaches Definition of Done

Builders Camp teaches the Definition of Done inside the Beyond Agile bootcamp, directed by Andre Albuquerque, through a practical challenge built around diagnosing exactly this kind of unenforced quality standard on a real team.

Builders Camp runs live and self-paced bootcamps in product management and AI product building. See the Beyond Agile bootcamp for the next cohort dates.