The DoR helps the Scrum team identify gaps in the expressed requirements that need to be filled before a User Story is accepted in a Sprint. Stories that are not ready typically cause clarification overhead and delays during the Sprint, and put the Sprint Goal in danger.

Example:

• User story is written down and understood
• Acceptance criteria are defined and complete
• Test data or test specification (Gherkin) is provided
• Size of the story has been estimated and written down
• Size is small enough to allow reliable estimation (not an Epic)
• Dependencies are identified, development tasks are clear