Samyak Jain — Definition of Done

⬡ DOD-01 EXECUTION Ship it. A shipped 80% beats a perfect plan stuck in a deck. ⌄

Perfect is a moving target — the market doesn't wait for it. I'd rather put a working 80% in front of users and iterate off real feedback than sit in review cycles chasing the last 20%. Every project I've owned moved because something shipped, not because a deck got polished.

// why it matters: momentum compounds, perfection stalls.

⬡ DOD-02 OWNERSHIP No excuses, own the outcome. If it's mine, I fix it — I don't explain it. ⌄

If something I own slips, the first conversation isn't about why — it's about what I'm doing to fix it. Stakeholders don't remember your explanation, they remember whether it got solved. I'd rather over-communicate a fix in progress than a well-reasoned excuse.

// why it matters: accountability is the fastest way to earn trust back.

⬡ DOD-03 DATA Read the metrics, not the tea leaves. Guessing isn't strategy. ⌄

Opinions are cheap and everyone in the room has one. I'd rather pull the number and let it tell me what's actually happening — support tickets, conversion, returns, whatever the product is supposed to move. Guessing feels like progress; it isn't.

// why it matters: metrics don't have an agenda.

⬡ DOD-04 COMMS Speak business, not jargon. If finance and the founder get it, it's real. ⌄

If I can't explain what I'm building to the CFO in two sentences, I don't understand it well enough yet. Product jargon hides gaps in thinking. I translate everything into revenue, cost, or time saved — the language every stakeholder in the room actually speaks.

// why it matters: jargon loses the room; numbers keep it.

⬡ DOD-05 AI Prototype with AI today, not a spec next quarter. A clickable prototype beats a well-formatted doc. ⌄

A working prototype answers questions a document can't. I use AI and no-code tools to get something clickable in front of people fast, then let their reactions shape the real build instead of my assumptions.

// why it matters: a spec is a guess; a prototype is a test.

⬡ DOD-06 AMBITION Take the problem nobody wants. That's where the leverage is. ⌄

The unglamorous, tangled problems — the ones everyone's been quietly avoiding — are usually where the leverage is. Nobody fights you for ownership of them, and fixing one properly tends to move a number nobody else was willing to touch.

// why it matters: uncontested ground is where you build a track record fastest.

⬡ DOD-07 STAKEHOLDERS Manage the humans, not just the roadmap. Projects die in the gaps between teams. ⌄

Projects don't die because the plan was wrong — they die in the gap between two teams who each thought the other owned something. I spend as much energy on alignment and expectation-setting as I do on the roadmap itself, especially when every stakeholder has a claim on the same deadline.

// why it matters: a great roadmap with an unmanaged room still fails.

⬡ DOD-08 SYSTEMS Build the car, not just drive the road. Do the upfront work so it runs smooth later. ⌄

Anyone can push a project across the finish line once. I'd rather do the upfront work — build the systems, the rails, the repeatable process — so the next ten trips down that same road run themselves. Short-term pain for long-term leverage.

// why it matters: systems outlast any single sprint.

Nothing ships until it meets these.

Let's build something.