u/devoldski

Do you have a shared understanding of readiness across teams, several definitions for different kinds of work, or is it mostly handled informally?

Across an organisation, product, design, engineering, testing, operations and management may all look at the same item and judge readiness differently.

One person may mean ready to prioritise. Another may mean ready to explore. Someone else may mean ready to execute. It might even be ready to postpone, merge or toss.

So when your organisation or team defines an item as ready, what exactly is it ready for?

EDIT: I’m especially interested in concrete examples. What does “ready” actually mean in your team, and is that definition mainly for development or for different kinds of work?

Or is it something to break down, simplify, understand better and improve before deciding whether it matters enough to act on?

How often does an item appear urgent simply because someone says it is, rather than because delaying it has a real consequence?

At what point does a backlog item become work you have actually chosen to do?

At what point does the team know it understands the problem well enough to start designing a solution?

Is there a conversation or activity that gets us there, or do we mostly assume it happens during refinement?

We spend a lot of time estimating effort, but much less time understanding value.

Before an item is ready for execution, shouldn't the team have a shared understanding of the problem, the value, the uncertainty, and what needs to happen next?

Otherwise, aren't we just moving disagreement downstream?

How do you decide whether something is worth building?