‘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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Why Scrum Is Lightweight; Simple To Understand; Difficult To Master?

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The Scrum Master through servant leadership helps the team improve Scrum practices which helps them become more productive and generate value. The Scrum Team’s role in motivating and helping the team comes through in the daily stand-up meetings that are arranged as part of the sprint. The Scrum Master encourages team members to share their grievances and progress made through the sprint. Team members can talk about obstacles that may be hindering their work and due cognizance will be taken up by the Scrum master to ensure that these obstacles are removed. According to the Scrum Guide, the Scrum Master helps the Development Team by: Coaching the team in becoming self-organized and cross-functional Helping the Scrum Team focus on creating high-value increments by removing impediments Helping the team deliver within the timeframe of the sprint Service to the Product Owner: The Scrum Master is a servant leader not just for the development team but also the Product Owner. 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The Scrum Master is an Agile evangelist and promotes Scrum enterprise-wide.According to Scrum.org the Scrum Master serves the organization by: Leading, training, and coaching the organization in adopting Scrum Planning and advising Scrum implementations within the organization Coaching employees and stakeholders in the way Scrum works Helping stakeholders work with Scrum TeamsSome Servant-Leader Behaviours for every Scrum MasterBeing empathetic: This is the foremost personality trait required for anyone wanting to become a Scrum Master. Your empathy will shine through in your interactions with the team members and your dealings with the stakeholders. You should be able to see problems from the point of view of each party and work towards solving these problems. Caring: As a caring and empathetic Scrum Master, your team will feel free to approach you and share their concerns. Providing a listening ear will make you more approachable. 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This makes it easier for Scrum teams within the Nexus to clearly identify and deliver their allocated tasks. Nexus Sprint Planning- Nexus sprint planning will involve the participation of the Product Owner and concerned teams' members from each team. The purpose of the Nexus Sprint Planning is to assign and co-ordinate activities for a single sprint. Nexus Daily Scrum- This is like the daily stand up in Scrum. Nexus daily scrum is used to identify any issues and track progress. Any issues are immediately prioritized and solved so that they do not hinder the work of the developers. Nexus Sprint Review- This event is held at the end of sprints to provide feedback on the increment that has been built and on any future updates that have to be made. Nexus Sprint Retrospective- Like in Scrum, Nexus retrospectives are an important part of the project and are used to reflect on how quality and consistency can be improved. Some Nexus ArtifactsNexus artifacts are the same as Scrum artifacts and when implemented correctly ensure transparency and value maximization. Every artifact is designed to give a commitment. For example, the product backlog is the artifact and its commitment is the product goal. Other artifacts and their commitments include: Nexus Sprint Backlog-Nexus Sprint Goal Integrated Increment-Definition of Done Along with Nexus, LeSS is another popular framework for scaling agile. Scaling Scrum with LeSS The Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) framework is an offering from Atlassian and is a framework for scaling Scrum to multiple teams that are working on the same product. The idea behind LeSS is to start with a single Scrum team as defined in the Scrum Guide and then replicate it to multiple teams who are working on a single product. LeSS has earned the label of being “barely sufficient” as it is a simple framework to apply and uses the basic concepts of Scrum to scale. How do Sprint Planning meetings in LeSS work? LeSS generally carries out sprint planning in two stages. Sprint Planning One focuses on selecting items that are of topmost priority, solving unanswered issues and defining the sprint goal. The Sprint Planning Two is like the sprint plan of regular Scrum and focuses on creating a plan of action for getting things done. Daily meeting The daily Scrum meeting in LeSS is similar to how it is done in normal single Scrum teams and involves team members discussing the work accomplished and the work to be done during the day. It is a time-boxed meeting and helps teams address any issues that may be hindering work. Sprint Delivery Meeting (Review) The sprint review meeting is an essential part of LeSS and helps teams and stakeholders review the product built during the sprint and suggest changes and new ideas. Retrospective The retrospective for LeSS is similar to one team Scrum. 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Tested and proven Agile scaling frameworks are now able to turn this around, and help organizations scale up the principles and practices of Scrum to become more adaptable, flexible and responsive. Professionals can master these frameworks and help their organization adopt the culture, mind-set and principles of Scrum and agile.

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