You shipped the feature. The ticket’s closed. The sprint’s complete.

But then the bug reports trickle in. Adoption is low. The sales team doesn’t know how to demo it. The docs are out of date. Suddenly, “done” doesn’t feel very done.

It’s a common trap: treating delivery as the finish line, instead of a checkpoint.

Done isn’t binary. It’s layered.

There’s technical done: the code runs, the tests pass, it’s deployed.

Then there’s product done: it solves the problem, it’s discoverable, users adopt it.

And then there’s business done: it moves the needle, reduces friction, or unlocks revenue.

Real delivery happens at the intersection of all three. Miss one, and you’re stuck in rework mode.

The handoff mindset kills quality

When teams operate in silos—devs throw code over the wall, product moves on, QA scrambles—you get a lot of shipped work that never truly lands.

High-functioning teams blur those lines. Developers care about adoption. Product cares about edge cases. QA cares about how the feature will evolve. It’s shared ownership, not a checklist handoff.

You need space for post-launch learning

Too often, the next sprint starts before the last one even cools. But every release is a chance to learn:

• How did users respond?

• What surprised us?

• What did we miss?

If you’re not running post-release retros or tracking real-world feedback, you’re leaving value (and problems) on the table.

Conclusion: Done Shouldn’t Mean Disconnected

Great teams don’t stop at deploy. They track, refine, and build on what works. Because in real software development, done is never the end—it’s just where the next good decision begins.

At DevRoom, we help teams build delivery processes that go beyond checklists. Because getting it done is good. But making it work? That’s where the magic is.