• Criteria that is used to identify any work item as ready to be be taken by a team member and worked on
• Collaboratively created, maintained and enforced criteria by the team

• Reduce scope creep on "in-flight" work items
• Increase understanding of the work item when pulling it to be worked on

Tips for Remote Working

• It is reasonably easy to find an agreement on both definition of ready and done remotely
• One person can be a facilitator writing it based on everyone's input or everyone can co-edit
• Use virtual white boarding tool and use techniques such as “roman voting’ or adding a sticky w/name to gain consensus.

An Example

Whilst Definitions of Ready should be specific to the teams using them, it helps to have an idea of what others teams are using. Included below is just one example current in use in AXA PPP Healthcare:

DEFINITION OF READY

User Stories meet INVEST criteria

Independent (of all others) 

Negotiable (not a specific contract for features) 

Valuable 

Estimable (to a good approximation) 

Small (so as to fit within an iteration) 

Testable (in principle, even if there isn’t a test for it yet) 

Must have Acceptance Criteria