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I am the ScrumMaster for a Scrum team and we are struggling to formulate a definition of done which really means something, is impactful and followed through.

The main issue, the developers say, is that the tasks on the scrum board are always so so varied. Some of UI tasks, some are very technical SQL query tweaks, others are writing unit tests for legacy code etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions.

We want to put the DoD up during planning sessions.

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It sounds like they are getting too deep into the technical weeds here. Definition of Done is a checklist, not a functional specification. Also, a DoD does not have to be a "All or Nothing". It is perfectly acceptable to have conditional statements (If story is UI related, then X).

Here is an example of a DoD pulled from a team I work with.

  • Story design document reviewed and approved.
  • Acceptance criteria has been met.
  • Code pushed and merged to the appropriate release branch
  • Unit test written, executed and passed.
  • Code review has been performed and approved.
  • Build on Jenkins run successfully.
  • No blocker violations, no critical violations.
  • Automation test cases were written and reviewed by team(dev/QA)
  • All functional automation tests have green lights.

As you can see, pretty broad definitions.

Perhaps one area where confusion may rise is in the case of Acceptance Criteria. Acceptance Criteria is one of the line items in the DoD, however it is itself a whole set of "tests". It is all the things that the product owner cares about from a functionality point of view. Acceptance Criteria is unique to each user story.

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