Definition of Ready: prepare a task without creating bureaucracy

A prepared task can still have unanswered questions

Definition of Ready is an agreement about having enough clarity to start work.

A team picks up “prepare the workshop page”. The next day, it discovers that the address, participation conditions and person accepting the result are unknown. Work has officially started, but everyone is waiting for answers. A few simple questions beforehand could have made this dependency visible.

DoR is not a mandatory element of the Scrum Guide. You can use it as a supporting agreement if it makes collaboration easier. Do not demand absolute certainty or turn a checklist into a wall between the people expressing a need and those implementing it.

Start with the real reasons work gets stuck

Look at recent tasks that stalled soon after starting. The cause might have been missing access, unavailable material, an unknown rule or excessive scope. A readiness checklist should help you notice those recurring obstacles, rather than copy someone else's methodology.

In our illustrative example, a team is preparing a workshop booking page. The designer needs confirmed conditions, the developer needs rules for available places, and the organiser needs to understand what they will accept. The example checklist centres on these dependencies.

1. It is clear who the work is for and what result it should achieve.
2. The important acceptance conditions and task boundaries are named.
3. The necessary inputs and access are known, or there is an agreed way to obtain them.
4. The work is small and clear enough for the chosen planning approach.
5. Open questions are visible, with a next step for each.

These points need not become five mandatory fields for every minor change. Correcting a typo and building a new integration require different preparation. Keep the purpose of the questions, but match the depth of discussion to the risk.

Example: you can start part of the page

The table does not automatically answer “ready” or “not ready”. It makes the choice explicit. You can start the page structure with an agreed placeholder for the photograph if the team understands the risk. Implementing an unconfirmed rescheduling rule as final is a different decision, with a different cost of rework.

Ask which uncertainty actually blocks the next step. If you cannot choose the behaviour without an answer, first have a conversation or investigate. If the answer only affects a replaceable detail, it may be reasonable to proceed with a recorded assumption.

How to work with uncertainty

You cannot fully describe an unfamiliar external service before trying it. Instead of inventing precision, define a bounded investigation: obtain access, check one scenario, record the constraints and propose the next scope of work. An investigation also needs an outcome, rather than an open-ended instruction to “figure it out”.

For example, the team does not know whether a booking can be moved an hour before the workshop. That is not a technical investigation: it needs the organiser's decision. Whether a request to an external service can be safely repeated may require checking the documentation and trying a scenario. Different questions need different actions.

DoR, DoD and acceptance criteria

DoR helps a team discuss the conditions for starting. Acceptance criteria describe the expected behaviour of a specific task. Definition of Done sets the shared quality standard for the completed result. They are related, but not interchangeable.

For a workshop page, readiness to start might include a confirmed date and booking rules. An acceptance criterion could be that a visitor cannot take a place that is no longer available. A shared quality condition could require the change to be checked and integrated with the rest of the product. Having the inputs does not prove those last two conditions have been met.

The Definition of Done example shows how to agree separately on what counts as a completed result.

You do not need three large documents if one page with short sections is enough. The labels are useful only while they help distinguish the questions. If the team spends more time filling in the form than resolving uncertainty, simplify the agreement.

How to check a task before starting

Ask the person who will do the work to describe the next result and one difficult scenario in their own words. If their account differs from the author's expectations, clarify the task together. This often reveals a problem faster than checking whether every field is filled in.

Then check inputs and access in practice. “Access should be available” and “the right person opened the required environment” are different states. For an important dependency, a brief factual check can prevent losing the first day of work.

Finally, choose an action for each open question and record what can start now. Do not use DoR to transfer all uncertainty to an analyst or client. Preparation is joint work, not the handover of a flawless document across departmental boundaries.

Where to keep the working result

In Sinqly, you can create a task called “Clarify the workshop page requirements” and add the known information, open questions and next step for each obstacle to its description. Signing up is free.

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A real Sinqly task card from the screenshot library, showing the description field in a different illustrative example. The screenshot uses Russian demo data. You enter the article's content manually; it does not show a dedicated specialist module.

How to tell whether the agreement helps

After a few tasks, compare the reasons work stalled. Are there fewer unexpectedly missing inputs? Do disputed requirements emerge sooner? Is the next step clearer to participants? Do not use the number of completed checklists as a measure of results.

Remove points that do not help decisions, and add questions arising from recurring problems. If DoR prevents investigation or delays a safe minor change, revise the rule. Good preparation helps people start with confidence, rather than prepare indefinitely.