Definition of Done and Acceptance Criteria

User stories must meet the definition of done (DoD) and the acceptance criteria before they are considered complete.

The DoD is the universal completion criteria for all user stories handled by the team. The scrum team defines the DoD and should review it on a regular basis to make sure that it includes all of the items that are needed to ensure the quality of their product is being maintained.

When creating your definition of done, think about the tasks that you want to perform before delivering any new functionality to your customers, including unit and functional tests. Individual user stories might also have additional criteria that must be met before they are considered done.

Examples of criteria for a definition of done include:

• Code was reviewed and approved by at least 1 other team member.
• Code passed all linter checks.
• All automated and manual tests run successfully.
• Integration build
• Customer facing documentation has been updated.
• Acceptance criteria is met.

Acceptance criteria is a set of scenarios that must be met to confirm that the newly built functionality is working as designed and meets the customer requirements defined in the user story. Acceptance criteria is unique to each user story. For example, if you are building a website and the user story involves a user successfully searching for products, your acceptance criteria might be:

• The search field allows all alphanumeric characters
• Search results are returned when the user clicks the Search button or presses Enter.
• The search results return exact matches and fuzzy matches to the search criteria.
• If no search results are available, an error message displays an offers an alterative search term.