Definitions of Done Checklist

Here is the latest version of the checklist I use to make sure I don’t forget anything important when I ship new features or significant changes. Hope you find it helpful!

Goals & Quality

• What were the main goals of this work? Does the solution still achieve them?
• Has anything visibly degraded for users? Anything that would embarrass me in a live demo?

Documentation & Content

• User FAQs, onboarding flows, and instructional videos updated
• Training planned for users (if internal tooling)
• Methodology, data dictionary, and technical READMEs updated
• Supporting copy elsewhere on the product (tooltips, help text, landing pages) reviewed and updated
• Known issues and limitations documented

Communications

• Internal: team informed via demo at show & tell
• External: relevant stakeholders informed of the change and go-live date
• Public product roadmap updated
• Comms: change is considere for comms planning, and comms assets written

Testing

• Analytics and observability instrumentation verified with key metrics tracked
• User acceptance tests completed per test plan — how will we know this works as expected, on which environments, and who is involved?
• Performance benchmarks met (load times, API response, error rates)
• Privacy standards met (if collecting sensitive data)
• Accessibility standards met
• Security standards met

Rollout

• Rollout plan defined — phased release, feature flags, A/B test?
• Rollback plan defined — if something goes wrong, how do we revert quickly?
• User feedback mechanism defined — how will we collect and act on feedback post-launch?