By Nick Butler
Tags: Agile
In Agile, the definition of ready is a checklist that can help you come up with user stories which deliver value quickly. Find out when you might want a definition of ready and how to create one, and get examples of the definition of ready.
The definition of ready (DoR for short) tends to be linked with Scrum, but it’s relevant to any Agile framework. In Kanban, it’s a way you can make policies explicit. In Lean, it can help you achieve good flow. And in XP, it aids the creation of user stories that get you fast feedback.
The definition of ready spells out the criteria your user stories must meet before development can start, to ensure they deliver value quickly.
In Agile, you refine user stories as they rise up your list of prioritised work ahead, adding more detail and building a better understanding across the team. You don’t want to start the story before you understand it well enough to complete it efficiently.
This is how the Scrum Guide describes the process: “Product Backlog items that can be Done by the Scrum Team within one Sprint are deemed ready for selection in a Sprint Planning event. They usually acquire this degree of transparency after refining activities.”
But how do you know when you have enough transparency? It can help to have a checklist that documents your team’s shared understanding of when a story is “deemed ready” to be picked up.
You only need a definition of ready if aspects of your user stories are slowing down their delivery.
If your team is already delivering valuable working software early and often, that suggests you have a good shared understanding of when stories are ready. In that case, you probably don’t need to document it.
There’s also a risk that your definition of ready can actually slow down development. That’s because some details are best clarified once you’ve started working on stories. If you set the bar too high, your DoR becomes a barrier to getting underway and getting value to your users. Aim to get just enough detail, just in time.
Mike Cohn has a useful post on these risks and how to get around them.
When you’re forming a new team, or have a number of new team members, coming up with a DoR together can be a quick way to get everyone on the same page.
You might also need a definition of ready if, once you start stories, you find that:
A lot of this will depend on your team. If, for example, your product lead has limited availability on the project, you’re more likely to find that clarifying stories while they’re in progress slows you down.
To make sure it’s relevant to your project, and to make sure everyone has the same understanding, it’s best to get together and develop your own DoR.
You’re looking for a checklist that is:
INVEST is a simple way to remember the kind of user stories that make it easy to deliver working software that your users want.
Effective user stories are:
Our Introduction to the INVEST criteria explains each of the criteria and why it matters.
Even if your stories meet these criteria, you might still find them slow going. For example, you might realise you:
The examples of the definition of ready below expand on INVEST by including ways to avoid these possible issues.
Our user stories are:
You could also structure your DoR around the standard elements of user stories, as in this example.
About a decade ago, Scrum co-founder Jeff Sutherland and Carsten Ruseng Jakobsen noted the benefits of defining “ready-ready” and “done-done” and shared an example of a “Feature ready-ready checklist”.
Around the same time, other examples appeared, now called the definition of ready.
While the Scrum Guide has never referred specifically to a definition of ready to match the definition of done, from 2011 it has talked about items being deemed ready for selection.
The definition of ready can complement the definition of done nicely. Learn more about how the two definitions fit together and how they differ.
The two share the same ultimate purpose: helping you deliver valuable working software. If you think your team might be ready for a definition of ready, hopefully this guide will help you get the value flowing.
