The importance of the Definition of Ready

Definition of Ready

The definition of ready is an agreement between the business and development team to ensure requirements are well understood from a business and technical point of view. This is a living process and can be updated based on feedback from the business or retrospectives.

This process will provide high confidence that business requirements are understood, and enable quick development and accurate testing. The ultimate goal is to streamline the process and release it into production at the earliest opportunity to receive business value.

Benefits include:

• High business confidence requirements are understood

• High developer confidence that the business requirement and technical solution are understood

• High-quality test criteria

• A handshake between the teams that the requirement

Cons:

• If stories are not ready, they shouldn’t be considered for a sprint and could leave the development team short of work (this highlighting another problem that should be resolved).
  
  This will unmask the root problem that more focus will be required on the analysis to create a steady pipeline for the team

Considerations for DoR

• Is the UX agreed upon and signed off? Note: UX and development teams will require working together to find the right UX for a site

• Business requirements may be well known but if the technical solution understood? If not, is a Spike required prior to accepting a requirement into a sprint

• Have all dependencies been resolved (to avoid stories going from one sprint to the next without actively being worked on)