‘Ready’ for Implementation, ‘Done’ for Deployment!!

by Rumesh Wijetunge
30th Jun, 2017
Last updated on 06th Mar, 2019

Agile projects are driven by the need for continuous progress and by the need of making that progress visible. Progress made is made visible through the different agile project management tools used, such as JIRA, Trello, TFS, RTM or even using a simple MS Excel tracking sheet. In this article I am going to discuss about two key statuses that can be seen in an agile project environment.

The ‘Ready’ status in agile projects has its own definition and explanation. Imagine a young lady getting ready to go for an evening wedding. She would spend a good two to three hours getting ready starting for a wash, a facial, a makeup, wearing the dress, hair dressing to wearing jewelry and so on. There is a list of tasks that she’d go through in her head before finally coming out of her dressing room confidently telling her husband, ‘Honey, I’m ready!!’. ☺

Getting ‘Ready’ in Agile is no different and is related to requirements. Specifically it is with regards to user stories, which are the primary form of documentation of requirements in, Agile. All user stories that have been considered as ‘potential candidates’ for the upcoming sprint MUST be in ‘Ready’ status before the team meets up for the Sprint Planning session.

How can we confidently say that the requirements are ‘Ready’ for implementation? It is more of a gut feeling rather than something set in stone. It is subjective and may differ from team to team. It can be identified as when the team is confident enough to say that they have adequate information to start designing and implementing the selected user story.

The following can be a possible checklist that can be used to check the readiness of a story. Again, this is not set in stone. The team is free to define their own checklist for this purpose.

Checklist to ascertain readiness of user stories:

Requirements elaborated in detail along with appropriate acceptance criteria being defined
‘Conversation’ on user stories has happened and findings recorded on the ‘Card’
UI / UX completed (only if UI is applicable)
Effort to implement the story has been estimated as story points (by involving everyone in the implementation team)
Requirement has been Peer reviewed and / or lead reviewed
Review comments incorporated
Walkthrough of the story during backlog grooming / story refinement sessions has been done with the development team

Note: Development team in Agile projects does not mean only the dev team but includes everyone in the implementation team

Story is refined based on the feedback received from the implementation team and the story point estimation is confirmed
User story is approved by business where the priority and business criticality has been confirmed

The above mentioned checklist can be checked as a guideline for any given user story. If the team agrees that all criteria have been ticked then it means that the user story is ready for consideration during the upcoming sprint.

Note again that above is just a guideline. For example, the checklist of another team may not have the checklist item of having the UI / UX completed for the story but they may take it up as a task to be done during the sprint.

While the definition of ready is being proactive, the definition of done is essential to validate that the feature defined in the story has been implemented properly.

Same as with the definition of ‘Ready’, the status ‘Done’ for user stories has a different meaning in an agile environment. For any feature implemented to be deployed into a production environment, the user story MUST be in ‘Done’ state.

Checklist to ascertain whether a story can be marked as ‘Done’

Test case preparation completed
Test case review (peer review / lead review) completed
Feature implementation completed
Unit testing completed
Code review completed
QA testing completed (Feature testing, Integration testing, Regression testing and NFR testing is completed)
Feature demonstration to project stakeholders is completed
Business review comments are recorded and analyzed – based on the analysis of review comments new user stories to incorporate changes may be identified for future sprints.

Once the aforementioned checklist is checked for any user story implemented during the sprint, that user story may be marked as ‘Done’ if no more work is pending for the same.

What happens if any of the checklist items is not complete?

If any of the items on the checklist are not complete, ideally the story should not be marked as ‘Done’. It simply means that the feature implementation has not gone through all the stage gates in place to ascertain whether the feature has been implemented properly. However, with the discretion of the customer or the product owner, the team may agree to mark a story as ‘Done’ even if a story has not passed through all the stage gates in the checklist. However, this is not recommended but must be done only if everyone is in agreement.

Rumesh Wijetunge

Chief Innovation Officer - Zaizi Limited, Chief Operating Officer - LearntIn (Pvt) Ltd., Director /

Rumesh is an IT business leader with over 12 years of industry experience as a business analyst and project manager. He is currently the CIO of Zaizi Limited, a UK based data management company heading the operations in Sri Lanka, the COO of LearntIn, a global training institute based in Sri Lanka and is also a lecturer / trainer at multiple private universities on management, IT, business analysis and project management subjects. He is the current president of the IIBA Sri Lanka chapter and is one of the most qualified and sought after trainers in Sri Lanka. Refer his LinkedIn profile for more details and to see more articles he has written on linkedin

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Agile at ScaleAgile Project ManagerScrum Master and Agile PM Roles Agile Projects at scale requires the role of a Scrum Master for the internal functioning of the team and the Agile PM for aligning multiple teams and orchestrating the activities of a Release. Agile PMScrum MasterTakes care of the facilitation, risk management, conflict management, handling of impediments that span multiple teams and external stakeholders. Engages closely with Senior Leadership, Product Managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters to ensure smooth implementation of the current release, forward plans for the subsequent release and co-ordinates the Post production activities of the previous release. Facilitates the Scrum of Scrums synch meetings at a regular cadence (every week). The Agile PM guides the scrum masters to resolve risks and impediments within the team if and when escalated. Takes care of these activities within the scrum team. The Scrum Master focuses on the current sprint and current release. Facilitates Scrum Ceremonies. Participates in the Scrum of Scrums and updates if the team is on track to meet the Sprint Objectives and if there is any change/ risk foreseen. During this meeting the Scrum Masters raise any impediments /risks/concerns they are unable to resolve and need help with. Release Management Continuous Integration and Deployment: With incremental versions of the product after every iteration from multiple teams early continuous integration is the need of the hour. Investing in an automated Continuous deployment into the Staging or Production environment is encouraged so that the latest version of the product is release ready. Enterprises are increasingly using toggle configurations to switch on/off a set of features so that the release can be done for a particular market segment or can be timed with an important milestone like a tradeshow. By separating the deployment and actual release, there is a lot of risk avoided. The actual product release can be announced at the right time – as per Market demand/ after a robust Beta has been done and feedback incorporated/timed with a compliance deadline or important milestone like tradeshows. Post-production Support: Releasing working software at regular intervals is not the end of the road. Customer Support, training and customer documentation where required is necessary and these activities should also come under the purview of an Agile Working environment. Beta and Canary Release: Large Enterprises engage with Beta customers to get focussed feedback on the product before a wider market release. Solutions and products can also be released to a particular market segment or a subset of users alone. This is called a “Canary Release”. This phased approach rather than a big bang approach will ensure the risk level is reduced and the quality of the product and credibility of the Enterprise is maintained. How is an Agile PM different from the Conventional PM The roles and responsibilities of a conventional Project Manager is now distributed amongst the Scrum Teams, Scrum Master, Product Owner and the Agile Project Manager. But the most important but subtle difference between the Conventional PM and Agile PM is the mindset. The Agile PM is a Servant Leader who wants to create a self-empowered self-organized team. He/she creates an agile environment where everyone is accountable, there is no fear of failure but the willingness to learn and continuously improve. The Agile PM avoids the traditional Command and Control approach where decisions are taken for the teams. . There is also a conscious effort to decentralize decision making so that decisions are taken closer to where work is done. There is always an emphasis for visualization of work and transparency. Go-to Traits for a Successful Agile Project Self-Organized Teams: Self-organized teams that are empowered and largely self-sufficient is an important facet of Agile. Teams are used to conventional ways of working where they look up to their superiors for decision making. Decentralized decision making will help largely to create empowered teams Responsive to Change: creating empowered teams enable them to respond to change responsibly with minimum red tape. Quick Feedback Loops: Agile thrives when there are quick feedback loops established so that teams can adapt to change based on informed decisions. Continuous Improvement: Learning from the past and resolving not to repeat mistakes is an important facet of Agile teams. Retrospection at end of every iteration and release is highly recommended. Business Agility: It would not be enough if engineering teams are agile and churn out software seamlessly. “Building the product right “is not sufficient and the teams should “Build the right product”. Solutions and products have to meet the customer needs and solve Customer Problems. All functions such as product management, marketing, sales HR have to come into the purview of Agile Principles and Values to achieve the kind of Business Agility that is required to be Customer Centric and deliver value. In conclusion, Agile is a paradigm shift from the phased traditional waterfall methods which run on detailed plans laid well ahead. Agile Project Management is the need of the hour considering the rapidly changing market scenario, disruptive technologies and the ever- growing competition. Before embarking on Agile projects organizations have to invest the time and effort to create a conducive Agile Work environment. The bare basics of Agile training and creation of small Agile teams (5 to 9 members recommended) with the vision to make the teams self-organized need to be in place. Agile Coaches and Change agents have to be identified to ensure the Agile transformation starts and keeps pace with small strides and does not die a natural death with teams, business and leadership falling back to traditional waterfall methods in the name of agile.

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Agile Project Management: Best Practices and Methodologies

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Agile Project Management: Best Practices and Metho...

by Radhika Subramoniam
01 Aug 2020
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