Motivation
Definition of Ready aims to define an acceptance criteria that a User Story must pass in order to become eligible to be considered for inclusion in Ready sprint backlog.
Applicability
Definition of Ready is an important tool that can be used by a scrum team to judge whether a user story is ready to be taken up for discussion in a sprint planning.
Application
While planning a sprint, a User Story must pass the following criteria in order to become eligible for inclusion in a sprint.
- A User Story must define an acceptance criteria which is testable.
- A User Story must also share information on why is it required, giving the team a bigger context on the importance of the story.
- Team should be able to estimate it; In other words there should be a loose implementation strategy associated with it.
Consequences
By including a story in the sprint that is not READY, the team risks building something that is not fully defined; This may lead to re-work. Another consequence could be expanding/shrinking scope of the problem of the story while the sprint is in progress.