Artifacts & Definitions

This page defines the shared artifacts and the two quality gates everyone refers to: Definition of Ready (can we start?) and Definition of Done (can we ship?).

Core artifacts

Artifact	Owner	Purpose
Product Backlog	Stakeholders (Product Owner)	The single, ordered list of everything that might be built.
Sprint Backlog	Dev Team	The slice committed for the current sprint plus the plan to deliver it.
Increment	Dev Team	The sum of all “Done” work - potentially shippable.
Product Goal	Stakeholders (Product Owner)	The longer-term objective the backlog serves.
Sprint Goal	Dev Team + Stakeholders (PO)	The single objective for one sprint.
Definition of Ready	Team agreement	Entry gate for a story into a sprint.
Definition of Done	Team agreement	Exit gate for a story to be called complete.

The hierarchy of work

flowchart TD
    V[Vision] --> PG[Product Goal]
    PG --> EPIC[Epics]
    EPIC --> FEAT[Features]
    FEAT --> STORY[User Stories]
    STORY --> TASK[Tasks]
    STORY --> AC[Acceptance Criteria]
    TASK --> PR[Pull Request]
    PR --> INC[Increment]

Definition of Ready (DoR)

A backlog item may enter Sprint Planning only when all of these hold:

The user story states who, what, and why (As a … I want … so that …).
Acceptance criteria are written and testable (we use Given/When/Then).
Dependencies are identified and not blocking.
A design approach exists (sketch, API contract, or note from the Architect).
It is estimated and small enough to finish within one sprint.
UX / data / security considerations are noted where relevant.

Definition of Done (DoD)

An item is “Done” only when all of these hold:

Code is implemented and meets the acceptance criteria.
Unit tests written and passing; coverage meets the project threshold.
Code review (Quality Engineer) approved; no unresolved blocking comments.
Automated security & quality gates pass in CI.
Functional / regression tests (Quality Engineer) pass against the acceptance criteria.
Documentation updated (code comments, API docs, user-facing notes).
Merged to the integration branch and deployable.

flowchart LR
    R[Idea] -->|meets DoR| S[In Sprint]
    S -->|build + verify| G{Meets DoD?}
    G -->|no| S
    G -->|yes| DONE([Done / shippable])

How AI keeps artifacts current

Documentation rot is the usual reason these artifacts decay. We counter it with AI:

Stories & acceptance criteria are AI-drafted from notes, so writing them is cheap (BA owns).
Release notes & changelog are AI-generated from merged PRs each sprint (Quality Engineer owns, stakeholders informed).
Architecture decision records are AI-summarized from design discussions (Architect owns).
This documentation site is markdown in version control, so updates ride along with code changes.

The rule is constant: AI drafts, a human owns and approves.