[jonpurdy]

You are 100% correct. This is why Acceptance Criteria are a thing: so the person working on the ticket knows exactly what it means to be "Done". If they're unclear, they must be made clear (by questioning as you did).

Often, unclear description or Acceptance Criteria means that the ticket hasn't been though out properly and needs to be clarified (or scrapped).

[btschaegg]

Not to dismiss your point, but I'd like to add that simply adding an "acceptance criteria" section to all tasks also isn't a solution.

I've just recently encountered a ticket from a certain person that does this all the time. The problem is that their criteria still only describe the solutions they imagined themselves, which are often… very suboptimal.

In the end, what you want is someone who is capable and willing to properly root cause a problem and weigh multiple possible solutions against each other. If nobody does this, no amount of superficial process will help you.

[zikzak]

Many of the process improvements we have made where I am over the last ten years boil down to "ok, stop, does this still make sense?" at each hand off. It helps that we make data driven decisions so the stakeholders know what they need rather than "yeah, can you make me a button that doubles or revenue?"