What is the “Definition” of Ready in Scrum?

Definition of Ready — the user story must be actionable immediately.

End users sometimes have ideas or concepts for new features. The concept is represented as one or more feature items that are added to the product backlog by the product owner. The development team will work together to figure out how to turn this concept into one or more epics and then break it down into smaller, clearer user stories that can be incorporated into the next Sprint implementation as true product features.

The product owner can work with the team to define an artifact called “Definition of Ready” to ensure that projects at the top of the product backlog are ready to move to the sprint so that the development team can confidently commit and complete them at the end of the sprint.

What is the Purpose of the Definition of Ready?

The definition of Ready describes the conditions that must be met in order to move the user story from the backlog to development in the next sprint. A User story considerations having a ready definition status means that the story must be actionable immediately.

Why Definition of Ready?

The Definition of Ready is a set of agreements that lets everyone know when something is ready to begin, e.g., when a user story is ready to be taken into a sprint, or when all necessary conditions are right for a team to start a sprint. An appropriate definition of ready will substantially improve the Scrum team’s chance of successfully meeting its sprint goal. Here is a list of benefits that a properly structured DoR can bring to teams:

• Measure a backlog item’s “ready” state
• Ensure that product backlog items have been thought through “just enough”
• Help the team identify when the product owner or another team member becomes overwhelmed
• Keep the team accountable to each other
• Reduce pressure on the team to commit to estimates before stories are “Ready”
• Reduce “requirements churn” in development

Example — Definition of Ready for a User Story

This section shows a sample Definition of Ready for a user story, and a sample Definition of Ready for a Sprint. You can adopt some of these as baselines or starting points:

• The value of Story to the user is clearly indicated.
• The acceptance criteria for Story have been clearly described.
• User Story dependencies identified
• User Story sized by Delivery Team
• Scrum Team accepts User Experience artifacts
• Performance criteria identified, where appropriate
• Person who will accept the User Story is identified
• The team knows how to demo the story.

Summary

The term “definition of ready” is not described in the Scrum guide; it is the same as the user story and the acceptance criteria within it. Perhaps, instead of using the definition of Ready as a sequential and staged checklist, you can think of it as part of a backlog item refinement activity. Backlog item refinement is an ongoing process, so it is not limited to an event, but is treated as an activity.