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PMP lesson · Agile Practices · Backlog and stories · lesson 3 of 3 · about 6 minutes

Definition of ready and definition of done

Agile and hybridFree preview
Goal: After this lesson you can explain the difference between the definition of ready, the definition of done and acceptance criteria, and protect quality under pressure.

1The situation

“Done… except for the tests”

Before a key customer demonstration, MES developers started marking stories as done without the automated tests the team had agreed on. “We'll catch up later.”

At the same time, stories kept entering sprints without acceptance criteria, and half of them were carried over.

Two agreements prevent both problems: one controls what enters a sprint, the other controls what leaves it.

2Two definitions, one set of criteria

Three different checks:

Ready
Before the sprint
Is the item clear and small enough to start? Criteria agreed? Dependencies known?
Done
After the work
Does it meet the team's quality standard? Reviewed, tested, integrated.
Acceptance criteria
For this story
Does it do what this specific story requires?
Under time pressure, reduce scope, not the definition of done. Work that misses the DoD is not done and returns to the backlog.

3Three checks

Backlog item
→
Definition of ready: clear, small, criteria agreed, dependencies known → may enter a sprint
Work in the sprint
→
Definition of done: coded, reviewed, tested, integrated, documented → may count as done
Story-specific check
→
Acceptance criteria: does it do what this story needs?
Ready before; done after; acceptance criteria per story.

4How it looks on the exam

Exam-style question 1. A story meets all its acceptance criteria but was not accepted at the sprint review because the code was not peer-reviewed or integrated into the main build. Why?
A. The product owner applied an unofficial rule
B. The story met its acceptance criteria but not the team's definition of done, which every story must meet
C. Acceptance criteria apply to the whole product
D. The DoD is written by testers only
Show the answer and the decode
Answer: B.
In simple English
Story-specific criteria met; general quality standard not met.
What is the question really asking?
Why it is not done.
Key words / trigger
“not peer-reviewed or integrated”
PMP logic
Done = acceptance criteria + definition of done.
Why the wrong answer looks attractive
'It works, so it's done' ignores the shared quality standard.

5Remember this

Your memory card

  • Ready = can enter a sprint · Done = meets the team's quality standard
  • Acceptance criteria = story-specific; DoD = every story
  • Under pressure: reduce scope, not the DoD
  • The team owns and strengthens the DoD over time
The full lesson in the PMCLEAR app also has:
  • the rest of the lesson (Who owns them)
  • a worked example
  • the common traps (wrong vs right)
  • 2 exam-style questions with the decode
  • a 3-question quick check
Open the full lesson → Create a free account
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