Definition of Ready

Having a Definition of Ready 1 means that stories must be immediately actionable. The Team must be able to determine what needs to be done and the amount of work required to complete the User Story or PBI.

"Ready" stories should be clear, concise, and most importantly, actionable.

These considerations are often summarized as the Invest Criteria 2, and they provide us with a useful Definition of Ready which can be applied to Product Backlog Items. By actively participating in Product Backlog refinement, a good Development Team will collaborate with the Product Owner in making sure that a standard such as this is observed.

I (Independent). The PBI should be self-contained and it should be possible to bring it into progress without a dependency upon another PBI or an external resource.

N (Negotiable). A good PBI should leave room for discussion regarding its optimal implementation.

V (Valuable). The value a PBI delivers to stakeholders should be clear.

E (Estimable). A PBI must have a size relative to other PBIs.

S (Small). PBIs should be small enough to estimate with reasonable accuracy and to plan into a time-box such as a Sprint.

T (Testable). Each PBI should have clear acceptance criteria which allow its satisfaction to be tested.

References

1 - Definition of Ready https://www.scruminc.com/definition-of-ready/

2 - Walking Through a Definition of Ready https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/walking-through-definition-ready