Definition of Done - the Ty varaint

Every time I meet Ty Crockett at an event he shakes my hand and mentions how many people he's helped to understand their team's Definition of Done or Ready using the card deck I create some years back. He's not bragging (but he should be) he's thanking me. But the fun thing is that Ty has evolved a better practice than I did. Maybe it's the repetition and small variations that has lead to the improvement. Yeah - I think that's it.

I may get this wrong ... but Ty's variation goes some thing like this...

Start with a big board. Divided into 3 sections. Introduce the concept of Brainstorming...

Add dividers to talk about how to organize the outputs of the brainstorm.

I usually print out DoD cards but do not show them to the team until we have a discussion on the types of things they need to consider.

For example: Here is a section out of the PSM course that I always ask teams to consider…

They create their own cards and ideas (on sticky notes). Ty brings out the example set and the team does some loosely facilitated rounds of placing the cards in the categories.

Sometimes I do the white elephant thing.
Sometimes I make suggestions.
It really depends on the energy of the room and the rigidity of the organization.
I also ask for organizational requirements.
I start with coding standards. No one ever knows theirs though...