Acceptance criteria and DoD

What does your team think about this?

The Scrum Guide doesn’t mention acceptance criteria at all. However it does state: ‘When a Product Backlog item or an Increment is described as "Done", everyone must understand what "Done" means.‘

Acceptance criteria are usually considered specific per Product Backlog Item.

The definition of "Done" refers to the Increment(s) produced within a Sprint. In many contexts, the same definition of "Done" can be applied to determine when each item is "Done".

The definition of "Done" might therefore include a line, such as "Acceptance criteria have been met".

My understanding is similar to that of Simon Mayer, except a Definition of Done can exist at different levels. Both Product Backlog Items and the Increment have a Definition of Done, and this is universally applicable. Acceptance Criteria are descriptions of how to tell that a particular Product Backlog Item is not only done but done correctly.

I totally agree with the contributions of our friends above.

As Simon mentioned above, usually an acceptance criteria is specific per product backlog. 

Let me give you an example of Acceptance Criteria and Definition of Done.

Suppose we are talking about a backend development project, PO may define the acceptance criteria for a product backlog item that the response time for a GET operation (an operation that returns information to the user) should be equal or less than 200 ms. 

A Definition of Done is applicable to every product backlog item delivered by the Development Team, providing transparency to everyone on what is required to consider a deliverable done. 

One example would be: every product backlog item delivered by the Development team must be unit tested, have the pull request related to the product backlog item approved by two other developers, the build must pass the regression tests [and meet its Acceptance criteria].