Definition of Done

In Chapter 2, I discussed how the result of each sprint should be a potentially shippable product increment. I also mentioned that “potentially shippable” doesn’t mean that what was built must actually be shipped. Shipping is a business decision that often occurs at a different cadence; in some organizations it may not make sense to ship at the end of every sprint.

Potentially shippable is better thought of as a state of confidence that what got built in the sprint is actually done, meaning that there isn’t materially important undone work (such as important testing or integration and so on) that needs to be completed before we could ship the results from the sprint, if shipping was our business desire. To determine if what got produced is potentially shippable, the Scrum team must have a well-defined, agreed-upon definition of done.