Acceptance criteria help us understand when the functionality is complete for a particular User Story. They're the criteria by which the Product Owner measures and accepts the story as done.

The Definition of Done (DoD) is a checklist that lets us know we've taken all the necessary steps to deliver any of our User Stories: the criteria by which the Development Team measures and accepts the User Story as done. More often than not, "All acceptance criteria met and accepted" appears on our DoD.

From time to time our team will notice acceptance criteria that regularly pop up on different User Stories. If we spot recurring items in our acceptance criteria, it may be time to consider including them in our DoD.

For example, when completing a piece of work, the acceptance criteria, "Include Google Analytics code to provide feedback for X" might appear regularly, especially if we have a metrics-driven mindset. If it does, then we should consider including this in our DoD.

In the next chapter, we'll show you an example Definition of Done and demonstrate how we can create our own.