A Developer on the firmware team finishes coding a new sensor-calibration feature, runs it once locally, and marks the task complete on the team's board. The item has not yet been tested against the team's agreed Definition of Done. Does this work count as part of the Increment?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
An Increment isn't a promise, it's a checked box. A piece of work only becomes part of the Increment the moment it actually meets the team's Definition of Done, not when a single Developer eyeballs it and calls it finished. Until then, it's just work in progress sitting on the board.
Full Explanation
An Increment is a concrete stepping stone toward the Product Goal, and the Guide is specific that a Product Backlog item becomes part of an Increment only when it meets the Definition of Done, regardless of how confident the person who wrote it feels. A single local run and a personal judgment call don't satisfy that bar, so the calibration feature isn't yet an Increment; it's still in progress. The first wrong option conflates individual confidence with the team's agreed, objective standard, which is exactly the gap the Definition of Done is meant to close. The second wrong option assumes future testing retroactively qualifies work as an Increment today, but the Increment status is evaluated against what's actually true now, not what's planned. The third wrong option misassigns the mechanism to a person rather than a standard; no individual, including the Product Owner, declares an item Done by fiat, the Definition of Done does. A concrete check at Nestbot: before counting firmware work toward the Sprint's Increment, walk the item against every criterion in the written Definition of Done, not just the ones the author remembers.