The following is an excerpt from Chapter 6 (Product Backlog) of my book Essential Scrum.
Grooming the product backlog should ensure that items at the top of the backlog are ready to be moved into a sprint so that the development team can confidently commit and complete them by the end of a sprint.
Some Scrum teams formalize this idea by establishing a definition of ready. You can think of the definition of ready and the definition of done as two states of product backlog items during a sprint cycle.
Both the definition of done and the definition of ready are checklists of the work that must be completed before a product backlog item can be considered to be in the respective state. An example of a definition-of-ready checklist for product backlog items might be:
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Definition of Ready |
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Business value is clearly articulated. |
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Details are sufficiently understood by the development team so it can make an informed decision as to whether it can complete the PBI. |
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Dependencies are identified and no external dependencies would block the PBI from being completed. |
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Team is staffed appropriately to complete the PBI. |
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The PBI is estimated and small enough to comfortably be completed in one sprint. |
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Acceptance criteria are clear and testable. |
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Performance criteria, if any, are defined and testable. |
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Scrum team understands how to demonstrate the PBI at the sprint review. |
A strong definition of ready will substantially improve the Scrum team’s chance of successfully meeting its sprint goal.
Does your project have a definition of ready? If so, comment below and describe it!