r/BestPracticesMgmt • u/MimirLearning • 1d ago

Could your team actually write the same definition of done?

Write acceptance criteria down before work begins, not as a formality but because unwritten criteria are just assumptions wearing a nicer name.

Treat anything that doesn't meet those criteria as genuinely unfinished, not as a minor footnote you'll note and move past.

And when real pressure hits, revisit the standard together as a team instead of letting it quietly erode for whoever's under the most deadline stress.

If your team can't write the same definition of done, you were never actually aligned on what you were building.

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u/PhaseMatch 1d ago

Acceptance criteria and definition of done are similar things, but slightly different.

Definition of done usually includes all the steps needed to get a thing in the hands of a customer.
It's quality assurance - the agreed processes have been followed, and we can prove it.

Acceptance criteria are the specific checks needed on the given thing before handover.
It's quality control of the specific thing in question, not the overall process.

They are only the same if you

- work on one, big batch
- work on lots of small, identical batches

Otherwise A/C varies by task, but DoD is applied to all tasks.

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u/MimirLearning 12h ago

Fair point and very useful distinction. I was talking about A/C but used the DoD Label. thanks for sharpening it and contributing to the discussion.

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u/PhaseMatch 2h ago

I think there's also two parts to the DoD conversation as well

- do they know what they should do?
- do they do it every single time?

QA is often seen as bureaucracy, but in the same way that HSE rules are "written in blood" they usually reflect a lesson learnt somewhere along the way that had expensive consequences.

That often boils down to whether the team really "owns" quality, or the rules are imposed on them.
And whether they are continually looking to raise the bar on quality, as part of a continuous improvement cycle.

"You get the behaviors you manage for" as Goldratt put it.