Who Owns the Definition of Done?
A Scrum Team at a fintech company has no written Definition of Done. Each Developer applies their own standard: one writes unit tests, another does not; one considers a feature done when it merges to main, another when it is deployed to staging. During the Sprint Review, stakeholders see a demo that later fails in production because two "done" items lacked integration testing. The Scrum Master proposes that the engineering manager, who is not on the team, write an organization-wide Definition of Done and hand it down. The Developers resist, saying it will slow them down. The Product Owner wants to know who is accountable for quality.
1. Who is accountable for creating and maintaining the Definition of Done, and is the Scrum Master's proposal sound?
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The Developers are accountable for creating a Definition of Done for the product. If the organization has a standard, the team must follow it as a minimum; if there is none, the Developers create one.
The Scrum Master's proposal is not sound as stated. Having a non-team engineering manager hand down a Definition of Done removes ownership from the people who do the work and undermines self-management. The Scrum Master's proper role is to coach the Developers to establish and own a Definition of Done, and to help them understand why a shared, explicit standard serves quality and transparency.
An organizational standard can inform the team's Definition of Done, but the team must own it and may make it stricter, never weaker.
2. How does the missing Definition of Done explain the production failure, and what does transparency have to do with it?
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Without a shared Definition of Done, "done" means different things to different people, so the increment is not transparent. Stakeholders inspecting the increment at the Sprint Review believed items were complete and releasable; in reality two lacked integration testing. The Review was therefore inspecting a misleading artifact.
Scrum relies on empiricism: inspection and adaptation are only meaningful if the artifact being inspected is transparent. A Definition of Done is the mechanism that makes the increment's state visible and consistent. The production failure is the predictable consequence of an opaque increment, not bad luck.
3. The Developers say a stricter Definition of Done will slow them down. How should the Scrum Master respond?
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The Scrum Master should not override the Developers' concern but should help them reason about it. A Definition of Done is not an external imposition; it is the team's own shared understanding of quality. If the current standard is producing escaped defects and rework, the apparent speed is illusory - the team is paying for it later in production fixes and lost trust.
The Scrum Master can facilitate a conversation: what does "done" need to include so the increment is genuinely releasable? What technical practices (e.g., automated testing, CI) would let a stricter standard coexist with sustainable pace? The decision rests with the Developers; the Scrum Master coaches the reasoning and removes impediments to raising the standard.