A Definition of Ready is a checklist of criteria that need to be met in order a for a piece of UX work to be considered ready to be worked on. By using the Definition of Ready to review a user story prior to or during a team refinement session, designers will improve the efficiency of their design process and user experience, avoid miscommunication, and increase alignment between the team and project stakeholders.

To use the Definition of Ready, prior to marking a task or user story as ready to be worked on, review the checklist and determine if you can answer ‘yes' to each criterion. If you find yourself answering ‘no’ to any, the task or user story is likely not yet ready to be worked on and may require further discussion or investigation.

UX Definition of Ready Checklist

• Discovery work - Has sufficient discovery work been completed to start this work? Is the problem this work aims to solve well understood by the entire team and stakeholders?

• Business requirements - Are there sufficient business requirements and acceptance criteria to start this work?

• Value to user - Will this work deliver value to the users? If so, have you identified which user types this work will deliver value to? If not, is there a way we can provide value to the users?

• Clear outcome - Does this work contribute to the roadmap outcome the team is currently working towards? Has this outcome been deemed a priority at this point in time?

• Shared components - Is this work that could potentially benefit other teams? Is another team working on a similar feature/outcome that your team could leverage?

• Measure of success - Have you established KPIs and/or metrics to measure if this piece of work is successful or not?

• Harm reduction - Have you considered who or what might be negatively impacted by this work, now or in the future?