What is DOR and DOD in Scrum?

From time to time, end users will have ideas or concepts for a new feature. The concept will be expressed as one or more feature items, and get added to a product backlog by the product owner. The team, working together, will figure out how to turn this concept, expressed as one or more epics and subsequently refined them into smaller and clearer user stories as a real product feature to be included in the next sprint for implementation.

The definition of Ready

The product owner could work together with the team to define an artifact called “the Definition of Ready” (DOR) for ensuring that items at the top of the backlog are ready to be moved into a sprint so that the development team can confidently commit and complete them by the end of a sprint.

The term “Definition of Ready” isn’t described in the Scrum Guide similar to the user stories and the Acceptance Criteria embedded in it. Perhaps, you may consider the Definition of Ready is an integral part of the backlog refinement activity, instead of using the Definition of Ready as a sequential and phase-gate checklist. Backlog refinement is an ongoing process, therefore it’s not restricted to an event but considered an activity.

Definition of Done:

The definition of Done is structured as a list of items, each one used to validate a user story or PBI, which exists to ensure that the Development Team agree about the quality of work they’re attempting to produce. It serves as a checklist that is used to check each Product Backlog Item (aka PBI) or User Story for completeness. Items in the definition of “Done” are intended to be applicable to all items in the Product Backlog, not just a single User Story. It can be summarized as following:

• The term applies more to the product increment as a whole
• In most cases, the term implies that the product increment is ready to be shipped
• The term is defined in the Scrum Guide
• Used as a way to communicate among the team members
  • Overall Software Quality
  • Whether the increment is ready to be shipped or not

DOD vs Acceptable Criteria

Definition of Done (DoD) is a list of requirements that a user story must adhere to for the team to call it complete. While the Acceptance Criteria of a User Story consist of set of Test Scenarios that are to be met to confirm that the software is working as expected.

The difference between these two is that the DoD is common for all the User Stories whereas the Acceptance Criteria is applicable to specific User Story. Acceptance Criteria of each User Story will be different based on the requirements of that User Story.

In other words, Both DoD and Acceptance Criteria must be met in order to complete the User Story.

The Product Increment is not considered to be complete, unless both these two lists are done. Thus, we need to define two aspects of the Definition of Done (DOD) – Completion Criteria and Acceptance Criteria: