Definition of done

Hello,

Well, both can do it.

Organizations working with Scrum Teams, normally define a Definition of Done that is applicable for all Scrum Teams in the Organization and is to be used by all. Changing the DoD is also defined by the Organization.

If there is no such DoD by the organization, the Scrum Team will define their own DoD and are free to change it in the Retrospectives

I liked an article by Sjoerd Nijland - https://medium.com/serious-scrum/the-definition-of-done-43ca6ed80e17

This should help you understand the concept well.

The first place to look for a Definition of Done is from the development organization. This could be the company as a whole, an organization responsible for a particular product, or anything else that is bigger than the team. However, if the organization doesn't have a Definition of Done, the responsibility for creating and maintaining one falls to the team.

In cases where you have multiple teams working on a single product, it's important that the teams have a minimum agreed upon Definition of Done. This helps to ensure that the integrated Increment is of sufficient quality and is potentially releasable.

In any case, a team can make a more stringent or rigorous Definition of Done. They cannot have one that is less rigorous that the organizational Definition of Done.

Defintion of Done is used to help everyone, inside and outside of the Scrum Team, understand what it means when the Development Team says "we are done with this item".  Some organizations will have criteria that they want to apply to all work. "Merged to master, deployed to production, accepted by stakeholders, run book given to Operations, Markeing plan in place, UI style guides are applied" are all examples.  This would be an organizational level Definition of Done. Each team in the organization would have to abide by those criteria.  However, some teams may wish to add more criteria.  That is great as long as their criteria does not lessen or contradict the organizational.  This is usually done in order to add domain specific criteria or to commit themselves to a higher standard of excellence.  "All new code is covered by automated tests, code has been present in Production for 24 hours with no major defects discovered" are examples of these.  

So there are 2 levels of Definition of Done.  Organizational that is created by interested parties such as R&D, IT Operations, Sales, Marketing and Team that are created to introduce some more granular or stringent criteria.  At least 1 of those has to exist. 

Hii, thank you so much for help :D

Reading the comments, there was still a doubt, is this team you refer to the entire scrum team or the development team?

Daniel, is it fair to say there could be 3 levels of DoD? I think my thoughts are aligned with Thomas' comment. 

Level 1: Organizational standards: The most common denominator, which every Product development has to abide by.

If "Done" for an increment is not a convention of the development organization

Level 2: Product: If there are multiple teams working on the same product, they all agree on a common denominator.

If there are multiple Scrum Teams working on the system or product release, the Development Teams on all the Scrum Teams must mutually define the definition of “Done.”

Level 3: Individual Scrum Teams expand their own DoD on top of the previous common denominators if those exist.

As Scrum Teams mature, it is expected that their definitions of “Done” will expand to include more stringent criteria for higher quality.

In addition, DoD may get updated every Sprint so the team should inspect changes to any of the 3 levels and adapt their DoD.

And correct me here...DoD is owned by Scrum Team and maintained by Development Team. (I just realized I mentioned just "team" in my last sentence)

Anand, I'm not sure what the value in more levels of the Definition of Done would be. In an organization that is supporting multiple products, I'm not sure that it makes sense to have an organization-wide Definition of Done. It seems like an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy rather than something that can help to improve the quality of the work done.

In an organization that is supporting multiple products, I'm not sure that it makes sense to have an organization-wide Definition of Done.

Could the organization take the risk of not having one? There may be a need to assure standards compliance, or security matters, or even just consistent branding. Consider situations where a CxO, as the accountable executive, might carry the can.

Monteiro, I had this same question, because the Scrum Guide sometimes says it is Scrum Team and other times, it says it is the "Development Organization" or the Development Team.  After posing the question, both on this forum, and in the Q&A section of an Exam Prep course I am taking, I have learned that the technical answer is that the Definition of "Done" is owned by the Development Team, however, they don't create it by themselves.  They use input from another source: the Scrum Team, or technically, the rest of the Scrum Team, since they themselves are part of the Scrum Team.  Of course, the Product Owner, in assisting with input as to the Definition of "Done", could be bringing in thoughts from the stakeholders as to the Definition of Done.

The development organisation will create a baseline for the definition of done that must be followed by all of the development team in that organisations. For example the development organisation might already have invested millions of dollars on Microsoft stack, so every development team must use Microsoft stack and follow development best practices in Microsoft stack. So the development team cannot just use Java stack because they want to. The development team may add additional items in the definition of done on top of the baseline that was defined by the development organisation. 

Check out this youtube video to understand more about how definition of done looks like. I realised many people in the industry confused definition of done with acceptance criteria. HTH.