DoD Characteristics to Avoid

Anything that inhibits the DoD from being consistently used should be avoided. Often when teams disregard their DoD it’s often because they either couldn’t find the DoD or because it wasn’t crafted well enough, making it feel irrelevant to the team members.

Avoid the following situations:

• DoD is not easily found - We often hear of Developers indicating that they simply couldn’t find the DoD.
• The standards in the DoD are set too low - if the DoD is too lax, it not only doesn’t serve its intended purpose, but it will feel inconsequential and easily ignored
• The standards in the DoD are unachievable - many conditions can contribute to an overly ambitious set of criteria. For example, the quality standards may be set too high for the stage of the product development, or items cannot be completed due to infrastructure constraints or other reasons
• The DoD creates a lot of administrative overhead -  for example, the DoD is simply too long and contains items that aren’t truly necessary
• The team doesn’t buy in or agree with the DoD - often this is because it was imposed on them without their participation