Definition of Done

Done means the same bar for every ticket, ideally enforced by the pipeline rather than by memory.

The checklist

• Acceptance criteria met and demonstrated, not just claimed.
• Tests at the right levels, passing in CI (Shift Left Testing).
• Contracts respected: unchanged, or changed with the consumers’ agreement.
• Reviewed in PRs small enough to review properly (Slicing Pull Requests).
• Observable in production: errors are captured, and so is the metric that shows it’s working.
• Nothing left for “someone”: docs, feature flags, migrations and clean-up handled.

AI-assisted work

AI-written code is reviewed and tested exactly like human code, and no new dependency comes in without a person approving it (AI-Era Supply Chain: What to Trust When Anything Can Be Generated). How deeply to review depends on what the change touches (Review Depth Follows Blast Radius).

Make it executable

A definition of done written in a document is a suggestion. One the pipeline enforces is a standard. Fail the build on missing tests, broken contracts and lint errors, and the conversation about whether something is done mostly takes care of itself.

Its counterpart at the start of a ticket is Definition of Ready.