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Definition of Ready

Ready for what?

Ready to be picked up by the delivery team and added to a Timebox/Sprint backlog.

NOT:

Defined to the nth degree of detail so that no further discussion is required.

Definition of Ready:

Like the DoD, the DoR is defined by the team and should be updated whenever it seems appropriate e.g if there's a big change in the team or the work; or the team simply sees the need for a change.
Being agreed and enforced by the team means that it should, hopefully, mean an end to the common moaning in retrospectives that 'the story was crap'.

As the team gets used to only selecting 'ready' stories it focuses grooming/refinement sessions to ensure that the top priorities are in the best possible state.

The business/product owner will also very quickly understand the need for good prioritisation and quality stories. This is driven home the first time a team refuses to take a priority story into an iteration.

While there are a number of ways to start, many people are familiar with the INVEST principles for writing good user stories.

This stands for:

Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable

DoR must, at the very least, address value, testable and estimable.

What might a basic DoR look like?

A story:
  • must have a defined business value (whether relative - points - or absolute - financial)
  • must be testable (by the owner at least, but also by the delivery team)
  • must be estimable (if it's too big to estimate, break it down. If we don't know enough to estimate, discuss it further and add details.)
  • must be prioritised in the team backlog
  • must exist in the tool used to store the team's stories (Cards or electronic)
  • must have a defined owner willing to work with the team and sign it off




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