The Product Increment and

The Definition Of “Done”

Road to Mastery — Season 2 — Episode 3

Those performing the work and those inspecting the resulting increment must share a common definition of “Done”. — The Scrum Guide

There can be plenty of confusion in the workspace over the smallest and simplest terms. This tends to be particularly frustrating when there is a disconnect about whether something is done or not.

Transparency

Scrum requires participants to develop a shared understanding of the process. This is called Transparency. And for a team to function well its work principles must be aligned.

Having transparency over “Done” also provides the benefit that the level of quality attained becomes clear, and so does it provide a good indicator of a team's capabilities and its dependencies.

It also helps to make the whole team accountable for end-to-end delivery.

But why is it so important to haggle over a simple term like “done”?! One might argue: it’s done when it is done, right?!

A “done” Increment

“The Increment is the sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and the value of the increments of all previous…