Mr. Agile talking about user story readiness

Mr. Agile is talking about user story readiness to Sarah in Agile Helpline series of Agile Bites. Enjoy this cool video and let Mr. Agile know if you would like to learn about any specific Agile topic.

Transcript:

Sarah: Hello Mr. Agile, How are you doing? I have a question for you. In agile, when do you consider something ready to implement?

Mr. Agile: I am doing very well Sarah. In agile, we have 3 stages of readiness:

1. User Story is READY if a team can implement it, and a Product Owner can prioritize it.
2. The Backlog is READY when about 1.5-2 times Sprint's worth of User Stories at the top of the backlog is READY, and those user stories are sufficiently small to fit in a sprint.
3. Team is READY when every team member is self-organized.

Sarah: That's very interesting and helpful Mr. Agile. Can you please explain more about user story readiness?

Mr. Agile: A User Story can be considered READY if:

1. It is defined as need, conversations, and confirmations and has unique priority in relation to every other story in the product backlog.
2. It follows INVEST principals, which means a story is independent, negotiable, valuable, estimable, and testable. 
3. It has been estimated (in story points) by the team.
4. It is small enough to fit inside a sprint. Larger stories should be reformulated and splitted before the sprint planning to be considered "Ready".
5. It does not have any known dependency that can block the completion of story.

In a nutshell, don't let anything that's not READY into your Sprint, and let nothing escape that's not DONE. This conversation is sponsored by Agile Helpline.

References:

• Definition of READY [article]
• Definition of DONE [article]
• Agile Rules of Thumb [rules] 
• User story and backlog management [article] 
• Featured Articles [articles]