definition of ready Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Olaitan Fashanu: When the New PO Stops Refining—and the Team Starts Self-Destructing

“If we’re actually doing the job of refining this ticket properly, then we will not be creating this tension in the team.” – Olaitan Fashanu

The team was working well. They had a strong PO who came to refinement with the problem clearly framed: this is what we want to solve, here’s the context, here’s the user story, here are the acceptance criteria. The team picked it up, refined it, ran with it. Then change came.

A new PO joined—and the routine collapsed. The new PO cared about one thing: hitting the delivery date. Tickets dropped into Jira with no context, no problem statement, no acceptance criteria. Just “this needs to ship by end of month.” Within weeks, Olaitan saw the symptoms cascade through the team. Developers asked designers what tickets even meant.

QA struggled to maintain quality. Tension built. The diagnosis was clear: refinement had broken. His fix? Bring back the Definition of Ready as a non-negotiable shared standard, and introduce a product trio—business viability, technical feasibility, and design usability collaborating on every story before it reaches the rest of the team.

In this segment, we talk about the Definition of Ready and the product trio collaboration model.

Self-reflection Question: What’s the symptom you’re seeing in your team right now—and could the real source be how stories are getting refined, not how they’re getting built?

Featured Book of the Week: The Secrets of Facilitation by Michael Wilkinson

Olaitan calls out The Secrets of Facilitation by Michael Wilkinson as the book that shaped how he handles difficult moments. The book teaches the power of asking the right question at the right time—clarifying questions, probing questions, the questions that drive a stuck group forward.

“You will understand how, when to ask clarifying questions, ask really powerful questions that will help you drive or probably help you reach your goal in any session you find yourself.” For Olaitan, the biggest payoff was learning to manage group dynamics in real time—what to do when something said in a meeting lands badly, when a comment threatens to derail the room.

As a Scrum Master, you live in those moments. This book hands you a toolkit for them.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

Do you wish you had decades of experience? Learn from the Best Scrum Masters In The World, Today! The Tips from the Trenches – Scrum Master edition audiobook includes hours of audio interviews with SM’s that have decades of experience: from Mike Cohn to Linda Rising, Christopher Avery, and many more. Super-experienced Scrum Masters share their hard-earned lessons with you. Learn those today, make your teams awesome!

About Olaitan Fashanu

Olaitan Fashanu is a customer-focused professional with expertise in product management, technology, and coaching. He drives digital and agile transformation, builds collaborative cross-functional teams, and delivers high-quality products across markets. Curious and strategic, he explores AI and data intelligence while balancing technical depth, business goals, culture, structure, and long-term vision.

You can link with Olaitan Fashanu on LinkedIn.

Michael Schmidt: Ensuring Kanban Sustainability Despite The Scrum Master’s Absence

In this episode, Michael shares his experience with implementing Kanban in a software development team. Despite a functional team, the input quality was not good enough, and the team also had too many people taking on the product manager role. Michael collaborated with them, establishing a workflow and introducing a “Ready-kanban” system. Daily product standups were instituted, but progress halted when Michael went on vacation. Upon his return, he discovered no improvements, highlighting a trust deficit in the Kanban process. Michael emphasizes the need for collective ownership and sustainability of the practice, urging reflection on its benefits for lasting success.

The inspiring story of how a failing hospital turned things around with Agile and Lean

Recovering from failure, or difficult moments is a critical skill for Scrum Masters. Not only because of us, but also because the teams, and stakeholders we work with will also face these moments! We need inspiring stories to help them, and ourselves! The Bungsu Story, is an inspiring story by Marcus Hammarberg which shows how a Coach can help organizations recover even from the most disastrous situations! Learn how Marcus helped The Bungsu, a hospital in Indonesia, recover from near-bankruptcy, twice! Using Lean and Agile methods to rebuild an organization and a team! An inspiring story you need to know about! Buy the book on Amazon: The Bungsu Story – How Lean and Kanban Saved a Small Hospital in Indonesia. Twice. and Can Help You Reshape Work in Your Company.

About Michael Schmidt

Michael a Berlin-based Agile Coach for teams, roles and organisations around software based product development. Michael invented “the taskboard” on his own, which ignited his working agile by conviction some 13 years ago.

You can link with Michael Schmidt on LinkedIn and connect with Michael Schmidt on Twitter.

BONUS: From journalism to Scrum Mastery, collected lessons on working with teams by Ian McGrady

Ian’s journey from journalism to becoming a Scrum Master is a testament to his adaptable mindset and persistence. His transition stemmed from a unique start; he secured his first job due to his fast typing skills and a desire to meet Peter Jennings. Ian’s persistence in seeking a meeting with Jennings honed his tenacity. The introduction to the Scrum Master role came through recognizing the news industry’s agile, continuous delivery setup. Despite challenges, like sending out 400 resumes for just 3 interviews and a job offer, Ian’s honesty on his resume and his ability to relate his existing skills to the software field were pivotal. In interviews, he remained coachable, acknowledged his learning curve, and emphasized genuine interest in others. He underlines the importance of not striving to be the smartest person in the room, instead focusing on collaboration and curiosity.

From TV News Deadlines to Agile Leadership, learning how to work under pressure

Continue reading BONUS: From journalism to Scrum Mastery, collected lessons on working with teams by Ian McGrady

BONUS: Diana Getman – How checklists make Agile teams faster and deliver with high quality, without adding more processes

In this episode, we explore the role that checklists can have in helping teams improve their process and their performance without adding more processes.

It is a normal tendency to “add more processes” to fix a problem a team is experiencing. In this episode, we challenge that view. Checklists, we argue, are a simple, effective tool that helps you reach a similar goal, but does not require the process to grow, and become bloated.

2 Common types of checklists that help teams improve how they work

There are several types of items we can add to a checklist. In this segment, we discuss 2 common types of checklists, and how they can help teams. We start by discussing the “process checklists”, which may include important tips on how to execute a certain process.

The key thing to remember is that checklists don’t replace processes, but are rather a set of reminders, or items that help teams execute a process once they’ve already read and understood the process.

The second type of checklists we discuss are those that summarize a series of requirements or pre-conditions that a team needs to follow-up on. This may include quality requirements or certain tasks that need to be completed before a certain work item is considered complete.

The most common checklists Scrum teams use

Scrum teams have a common set of checklists that they use. We discuss the commonly used Definition of Done, and also talk about the importance of having a Definition of Ready, and how that may help teams get started on the right foot when a new Sprint is about to kick-off.

Additionally, we talk about a pre-release checklist. With a pre-release checklist, teams are able to keep a memory of what they’ve learned from the past about meeting the release requirements, and can continuously improve that critical aspect of any team’s process.

In this segment, we also tackle the usual objections that people given when asked to consider the use of checklists. Checklists may be seen as “more bureaucracy”, but instead, they are there to help teams summarize a process that already exists, provides transparency about the process execution, and ultimately it should be a time saver for the team.

How about you? How have you used Checklists in your work? Share your experience in the comments below.

About Diana Getman

Diana Getman has more than 25 years of experience as a project manager leading cross-functional teams, in both startup and non-profit organizations. Diana has held the roles of Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Agile Coach and is the current President at Ascendle, a custom software development firm in Portsmouth, NH.

You can link with Diana Getman on LinkedIn, or visit Ascendle’s blog for more on checklists.

Elena Popretinskaya: Definition of Ready, a Scrum tool to help teams start a Story on the right foot

Teams that are motivated, can also find themselves in trouble. This happens, for example, when teams are eager to get started and rush into implementing stories that are not well understood or defined.

In this episode, we talk about the possible pitfalls of being “too” driven, and how we can help teams get ready to start implementing before committing to early.

In this episode, we refer to a tool called “Definition or Ready”, a simple checklist (à lá Definition of Done) that helps teams make sure that they have enough information to get started implementing.

Featured Book for the Week: Emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman

In Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, Elena found an explanation and a reminder that humans are not computers. We are emotional creatures. Our emotions drive our behavior as much as anything else.

About Elena Popretinskaya

Elena considers herself a lifetime learner (she says, she absolutely loves having “aha!” moments). And she especially enjoys learning together with and from other people: her team and her friends. Elena is curious about everything: people, software craftsmanship and the world around. Elena is also a passionate hiker and a cross-country skier 🙂

You can link with Elena Popretinskaya on LinkedIn and connect with Elena Popretinskaya on Twitter.