Here are some tips and tricks to help you develop your Definition of Ready practice:

• The Product Owner should work with the Agile Team to establish their initial Definition of Ready. This should be a collaborative effort.
• The Backlog Refinement event is the main event to work stories to Definition of Ready
• Think about creating a Ready (sub-)state on your Team Kanban board to reduce the amount of time you revisit items as part of refinement and visually see that there is sufficient backlog for the Team.
• Define your exit criteria for the step before commitment to work based on your Definition of Ready
• Ensure Teams and Product Owner regularly discuss their Definition of Ready. After all, this is a working agreement aimed at improving the flow of value and so will need revision as things change.
• Use time-boxes to limit how much time is spent collaborating on a Story, and treat items with lots of unknowns as “homework”. For example, perhaps set up a Spike (Enabler) story if there is requirements or implementation uncertainty, and bring results back to the next Iteration Planning or Backlog Refinement event.