Nestbot's firmware Definition of Done includes a criterion that the firmware image must pass the company's internal FCC pre-compliance check before a Product Backlog item can be called Done. A visiting consultant claims the Scrum Guide itself specifies this exact criterion. Is the consultant right?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
The Scrum Guide tells you a Definition of Done has to exist and has to be honestly met before anything counts as Done, but it never hands you the actual checklist. Nestbot's team wrote the FCC pre-compliance check into theirs because it makes sense for a physical product, not because the Guide told them to. The content is theirs to define; only the requirement to have one, and to mean it, comes from the Guide.
Full Explanation
The Scrum Guide requires that a Definition of Done exist and be honored before work counts as part of an Increment, but it deliberately does not prescribe the specific criteria that Definition of Done contains; that content is defined by the Developers, incorporating standards required by their organization. So Nestbot including an FCC pre-compliance check makes complete sense given they build physical hardware, but it's the team's own addition, not a clause lifted from the Guide. Claiming the Guide requires regulatory pre-compliance specifically for hardware products invents a hardware-specific rule that appears nowhere in a framework meant to apply across product types. Claiming there's a fixed list of criteria for every product misunderstands the Definition of Done as universal rather than as something each team tailors to its own product and organizational context. Claiming the Definition of Done can't extend beyond software testing wrongly narrows it; nothing in the Guide limits its content to code-level checks, and a certification gate is a perfectly legitimate criterion for a physical product. A practical check: when reviewing any Definition of Done, ask whether each criterion reflects this team's actual product and organization, since the Guide only ever asked for a criterion to exist and be genuinely met, never for a specific one.