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A systematic review on the use of Definition of Done on agile software development projects

Published: 15 June 2017 Publication History

Abstract

Background: Definition of Done (DoD) is a Scrum practice that consists of a simple list of criteria that adds verifiable or demonstrable value to the product. It is one of the most popular agile practices and assures a balance between short-term delivery of features and long-term product quality, but little is known of its actual use in Agile teams.
Objective: To identify possible gaps in the literature and define a starting point to define DoD for practitioners through the identification and synthesis of the DoD criteria used in agile projects as presented in the scientific literature.
Method: We applied a Systematic Literature Review of studies published up to (and including) 2016 through database search and backward and forward snowballing.
Results: In total, we evaluated 2326 papers, of which 8 included DoD criteria used in agile projects. We identified that some studies presented up to 4 levels of DoD, which include story, sprint, release or project. We identified 62 done criteria, which are related to software verification and validation, deploy, code inspection, test process quality, regulatory compliance, software architecture design, process management, configuration management and non-functional requirements.
Conclusion: The main implication for research is a need for more and better empirical studies documenting and evaluating the use of the DoD in agile software development. For the industry, the review provides a map of how DoD is currently being used in the industry and can be used as a starting point to define or compare with their own DoD definition.

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  1. A systematic review on the use of Definition of Done on agile software development projects

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    EASE '17: Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering
    June 2017
    405 pages
    ISBN:9781450348041
    DOI:10.1145/3084226
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 15 June 2017

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    Author Tags

    1. Agile Software Development
    2. Definition of Done
    3. Systematic Literature Review

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    • (2024)Ethische, rechtliche und soziale Aspekte (ELSA) der Gestaltung von KI-Systemen: Systematisierung der Betrachtung durch Vorgehensmodelle und LeitfädenEthical, legal and social implications (ELSI) of the design of AI systems: Systematization of the consideration through procedure models and guidelinesZeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft10.1007/s41449-024-00422-978:2(160-169)Online publication date: 28-May-2024
    • (2023)Distributed Scrum: A Case Meta-analysisACM Computing Surveys10.1145/362651956:4(1-37)Online publication date: 10-Nov-2023
    • (2023)Proposed Framework to Manage Non-Functional Requirements in AgileIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2023.328119511(53995-54005)Online publication date: 2023
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