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Definition of done in scrum of scrums

Last post 06:03 am November 20, 2015 by Anonymous
6 replies
10:32 am November 17, 2015

i found this question in following site
http://tracks.roojoom.com/r/22315#/trek?page=1
the question is : During scrum of scrums approach for a project, what is a best defines definistion of done ? the answer according to site is " each team uses it is own DOD but must make it clear all other teams"
while i think that all teams working in same project using same product backlog should have same DOD..
what do you think ?


01:22 pm November 17, 2015

Hi Ahmed,

Allow me to share some of my understanding....

Firstly, some of the answers are just wrong in this video and I also do not think it has the support of the ScrumAlliance (another certifying body).
[The intro / title of the video says "Certified Scrum Master Sample Questions And Answers"

Look at section 1:11 --

Question Asked: "The Sprint Backlog is ultimately owned by ___"
Answer Provided: Product Owner
[Via NK] -- This is incorrect.
.
.
.
I stopped there as there was nothing further needed to assess credibility.

Furthermore, scrum does not mandate or require a "Scrum of Scrums (SOS)," which I consider a coordination technique between multiple teams.

Over the years, I have seen different interpretations to the SOS as well.

Some further reading, if you are interested --
http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/scrumofscrums.html

http://scaledagileframework.com/scrum-master/

This is independent of the "Definition of Done" which does have a formal definition and use in the framework. I would refer to the Scrum Guide as authored by Schwaber and Sutherland, the co-developers of Scrum.


03:53 am November 18, 2015

The Definition of Done belongs to the Product Increment. This implies that if several teams work on a single Product, there has to be a definition of done for the whole Product. This ensures that the whole Product is shippable and usable.
However each individual team can use a more stringent Definition of Done for their own work. They just cannot apply less than the Definition of Done of the whole product.
This is described in the Nexus Guide:
https://www.scrum.org/Portals/0/NexusGuide%20v1.1.pdf
This has nothing to do with the Scrum of Scrums, which is just an additional Daily for representatives of the Dev Teams as a scaling technique.
In Nexus, this is called the Nexus Daily Scrum.


03:59 am November 18, 2015

Hi Ahmed,

I'd agree with that answer for a couple of reasons. Firstly the Scrum guide states 'During each Sprint Retrospective, the Scrum Team plans ways to increase product quality by adapting the definition of “Done” as appropriate.'. The implication is that with multiple teams the way they each tweak the DoD in their own retrospectives will differ

Secondly I'm working in a multiple team scrum environment at the moment, we established a baseline DoD that all teams must adhere to as a minimum but each team is free to add to it and this seems to be working well. As we move forward we'll share the information about the additions we've made for cross team adoption candidates


09:59 am November 18, 2015

> The Definition of Done belongs to the Product Increment. This
> implies that if several teams work on a single Product, there has
> to be a definition of done for the whole Product...

Correct. There is however a further implication which ought to be stated for clarity. An SoS (or a Nexus Integration Team for that matter) may facilitate the identification of a "whole product" DoD, but they do not own it. This is because they do not and cannot perform any of the work needed to build and integrate an Increment. A "whole product" DoD is essentially an abstraction layer over those DoD's which are owned and managed by the individual Development Teams working on that product.


09:50 pm November 18, 2015

+100 to Nitin's answer.


Anonymous
06:03 am November 20, 2015

A technique to scale Scrum up to large groups (over a dozen people), consisting of dividing the groups into Agile teams of 5-10. Each daily scrum within a sub-team ends by designating one member as "ambassador" to participate in a daily meeting with ambassadors from other teams, called the Scrum of Scrums


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