A shared definition of done for embedded developers

An embedded developer should use the same definition of done as the internal team. Agree on the evidence required to call work complete before the first ticket reaches review. Otherwise, “finished” can mean a working local branch to one person and a supported production change to another.

For buyers, this agreement makes delivery easier to inspect without turning every ticket into a status meeting. The objective is a usable quality baseline, not a larger approval chain.

Separate three decisions that often get mixed together

Acceptance criteria describe what a particular change must do. A definition of done describes the quality conditions that apply across changes. Release approval decides when and under whose authority a completed change goes live.

The Scrum Guide treats the definition of done as a shared description of the product’s required quality state. You can use that distinction when discussing delivery even if your team follows a different process.

For example, “an expired invitation shows a recovery option” belongs in acceptance criteria. “Changed behavior has appropriate tests” belongs in the common baseline. “Enable the feature after support training” is a release decision. Keeping those separate prevents a scheduling delay from disguising missing engineering work.

Write evidence a reviewer can actually check

Use a short baseline that points to artifacts rather than vague assurances:

Condition	Evidence attached to the change
Intended behavior works	Acceptance criteria mapped to checks or a demonstration
Existing behavior is protected	Relevant automated checks and focused regression results
Failure paths are understood	Error handling and recovery behavior reviewed
Team standards are met	Review approval and required repository checks
Operational impact is addressed	Deployment notes, monitoring changes, or an explicit reason these do not apply

Do not require the same evidence volume for a copy correction and a data migration. Keep the baseline common, then add risk-specific requirements. A migration may need a rehearsal and a forward-recovery plan; a text edit generally will not.

Worked example: an invitation resend action

Consider a hypothetical application where administrators can resend an invitation. The feature’s acceptance criteria cover permissions, expired invitations, and a clear confirmation message.

The developer demonstrates the happy path and opens a pull request. That is progress, but the ticket is not done if repeated clicks can send unexpected duplicate messages and nobody has checked failure behavior.

Under the agreed baseline, the team adds coverage for a repeated request, checks that unauthorized users cannot invoke the action, and documents how support can identify a failed send without exposing message contents. The reviewer verifies those artifacts.

The business may still choose to enable the feature later. Record that release state separately. This example illustrates a decision process, not a reported 5e Labs result.

Resolve exceptions without creating a second standard

An urgent release sometimes needs a documented exception. Record which condition is unmet, the exposure, the accountable decision-maker, and the follow-up owner. Do not quietly mark the missing work complete or invent a weaker standard for external contributors.

Review the baseline after an actual misunderstanding. If a condition repeatedly generates debate, replace it with something observable. If nobody uses a requirement to make a decision, question whether it belongs.

Take one recently completed ticket and test it against the proposed baseline with an internal reviewer and the incoming engineer. That exercise is a practical starting point for an embedded staffing engagement.